Hundreds missing after Egyptian ferry sinks

Three hundred people were rescued after a ferry carrying 1,300 passengers sank overnight in the Red Sea between Saudi Arabia and Egypt, but hope was fading yesterday of finding other survivors.

Rescuers had already pulled at least 185 bodies from the water, a senior police official in the Egyptian port of Safaga, the centre for an operation led by the Egyptian navy, said.

As darkness fell, search boats were still bringing in the dead and survivors back towards Safaga, where the 35-year-old ferry Al Salam 98 carrying mainly Egyptians should have arrived at midnight GMT yesterday, security sources said.

General Mahfouz Taha, head of the Red Sea Ports Authority, said rescue efforts would continue in the hope of finding more survivors. But another source close to the operations said: "There aren't expected to be many survivors, because it's been so long since the ship went down."

Mamdouh Radi, who runs the fleet for el-Salam Maritime Transport Company, told Reuters that the 300 survivors were on their way to Safaga or had already arrived.

Egyptian television ran a video showing a black rubber dinghy, filmed during a flight over the scene of the disaster. But it was impossible to see if anyone was aboard.

The 11,800 gross-tonne ferry last had contact with shore at about 2000 GMT on Thursday on its way to Safaga from Duba in northwest Saudi Arabia, one official said.

An official at the shipping company, which owned the Panamanian-registered ferry, said it remained unclear what had happened to the ship, which was built in Italy in 1970 and moved to the Egyptian company in 1998.

But none of the officials said there was any indication that the sinking was the result of an attack on the ferry.

The ship, which was carrying 42 vehicles, was of a type that can sink quickly if water enters through one of the doors through which vehicles drive aboard, experts said. That happened with the ferries Herald of Free Enterprise of Belgium in 1987 and Estonia in the Baltic in 1994.

"If these doors are open for any reason, then you've had it. The more we consider the various elements, weather does seem to have been a factor... All you need is bashing by the sea and suddenly you get an ingress of water," said Richard Clayton, news editor at the shipping weekly Fairplay.

Most of the passengers were Egyptians working in Saudi Arabia, officials said, but at this time of year many Egyptians are still on their way home from the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.

State news agency MENA said there were 1,272 passengers: 1,158 Egyptians, 99 Saudis, six Syrians, four Palestinians, a Canadian, a Yemeni, an Omani, a Sudanese and one person from the United Arab Emirates. The ship had a crew of close to 100.

The London-based Lloyds Marine Intelligence Service, citing the Egyptian Defence Ministry, said the ship was believed to have sunk about half way across the Red Sea, which is some 200 kilometres wide at that point.