link to yahoo news

Here the link to an image from shipspotting.com. (taken by Yvon Perchoc).

[ 02-03-2006: Message edited by: Ernst ]

CAIRO, Egypt - An Egyptian passenger ship carrying 1,300 people has sunk in the Red Sea, the head of the Egyptian Maritime Authority said Friday.

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Mahfouz Taha Marzouk said the ship, "Salaam 98," sank 40 miles off the Egyptian port of Hurghada.

There was no indication of what may have brought down the ship.

Helicopters have spotted bodies as well as one lifeboat carrying three people near where the ship was last seen on the radar screens, Egyptian maritime officials said. They did not say how many bodies were sighted.

Four Egyptian frigates have sailed to rescue survivors, Egypt's minister of transport, Mohammed Lutfy Mansour, told CNN.

"The Coast Guard is doing every in its power to try to rescue these people," Mansour said.

Britain also diverted one of its warships to the scene.

Asked about the safety of the ship, Mansour said it met safety requirements and that the number of passengers on board was less than the capacity.

The ship disappeared from radar screens shortly after sailing from the western Saudi port of Dubah at 7 p.m. local time on Thursday night, maritime officials in Suez said.

The ship was due in at Egypt's port of Safaga at 3 a.m. local time, the officials added. Dubah and Safaga lie across from each other at the northern end of the Red Sea.

The ship is owned by the Egyptian firm El-Salaam Maritime Transport Co. and was carrying 1,300 passengers, officials said. Some of the passengers are believed to be pilgrims returning from the annual hajj to Mecca, which ended last month.

Mamdouh Ismail, the company's owner, said the ship is more than 25 years old and registered in Panama. He refused to elaborate.

link 1 to elsalammaritime.com

Strange there was no SOS either... or so initial reports are saying. She just disappeared off the radar. Very sad for those aboard. I wonder if she may have been overloaded with families still returning form the Hajj.

The BBC are using the same image too [on FOF and Shipspotting]. I assume it's use must have been permitted if all news stations are using it? The BBC is also using the small imiage off your website link Ernst, in a map.

BBC report

Horror fore those a/b the stricken ferry.

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Originally posted by PamM:
I think this is the 3rd one of these top heavy & skirted vessels to go down ?

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Originally posted by elad:
i saw it on newa
heres another pictures:

Elad

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AL SALAM PETRARCA 90 went to fire 2002
AL SALAM BOCCACCIO 98 just sunk Jan 06
then
PRIDE OF AL SALAM 95 sunk after accident Oct 05

2 sisters, 3 overall to El Salam.. the apparent top heaviness of these vessels, and the others doesn't seem to be a problem. I think all were such before purchase by the Egyptians.. sailing for Tirrenia, P&O etc.. ugly brutes, I bet the wind catches them though?

[ 02-03-2006: Message edited by: Ernst ]

The link (in french, sorry) :

Here is a report from The Hindu:

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Most feared dead in Egyptian ship tragedy
February 4, 2006

Safaga, (AP): Rescue boats have picked up 435 survivors from the Egyptian ferry that caught fire and sank in the Red Sea, police said on Saturday as their officers struggled to hold back hundreds of people trying to push their way into this port to get information about their loved ones among the ship's 1,400 passengers and crew.

"No one is telling us anything," said Shaaban el-Qott, from the southern city of Qena, who was furious after waiting all night at the port gates for news of his cousin. "All I want to know if he's dead or alive."

Referring to the President, el-Qott added: "May God destroy Hosni Mubarak."

A hysterical woman banged on an iron gate to the port, where survivors from the "Al-Salaam Boccaccio 98" ferry were being brought ashore.

The port officials were not distributing lists of survivor names to the crowd outside, who repeatedly tried to break through a line of helmeted police with sticks.

The ship sank in the dark hours of Friday morning while ferrying people and cars between the Saudi port of Dubah and Safaga, on the opposite side of the Red Sea. Survivors said a fire broke out, got out of control and there were explosions. The vessel apparently sank suddenly as no distress signal was received.

Transport Minister Mohammed Lutfy Mansour, told reporters that investigators were trying to determine whether the fire, which he described as "small," led to the sinking. He denied there were explosions.

President Mubarak flew to the port of Hurghada, about 60 kilometers (40 miles) further north, on Saturday to oversee the rescue operation and visit survivors, state television reported.

A group of nearly 140 survivors came ashore at Hurghada shortly before dawn. Wrapped in blankets, they walked down a rescue ship's ramp, some of them barefoot and shivering, and boarded buses for a local hospital. Several were on stretchers.

Many survivors said the fire began about 90 minutes after departure, but the ship kept going. Their accounts varied on the fire's location, with some saying it was in a storeroom or the engine room.

"They decided to keep going. It's negligence," one survivor, Nabil Zikry, said before he was moved along by police, who tried to keep the survivors from talking to journalists.

"It was like the Titanic on fire," another one shouted.

Ahmed Elew, an Egyptian in his 20s, said he went to the ship's crew to report the fire and they told him to help with the water hoses to put it out. At one point there was an explosion, he said.

When the ship began sinking, Elew said he jumped into the water and swam for several hours. He said he saw one lifeboat overturn because it was overloaded with people. He eventually got into another lifeboat. "Around me people were dying and sinking," he said.

"Who is responsible for this?" he said. "Somebody did not do their job right. These people must be held accountable."

Several survivors shouted to journalists their anger over slow rescue efforts. "They left us in the water for 24 hours. A helicopter came above us and circled, we would signal and they ignored us," one man shouted. "Our lives are the cheapest in the world," another said.

A spokesman for President Hosni Mubarak said the ferry did not have enough lifeboats, and questions were raised about the safety of the 35-year-old, refitted ship that was weighed down with 220 cars as well as the passengers.

"t's a roll-on, roll-off ferry, and there is big question mark over the stability of this kind of ship," said David Osler of the London shipping paper Lloyds List. "It would only take a bit of water to get on board this ship and it would be all over. ... The percentage of this type of ferry involved in this type of disaster is huge."

Weather may also have been a factor. There were high winds and a sandstorm overnight on Saudi Arabia's west coast.

Officials said more than 185 bodies were recovered while hundreds remained missing in the dark, chilly sea nearly 24 hours after the ship went down. One lifeboat was sighted from a helicopter during the day bobbing in the waves with what appeared to be about a dozen or more passengers.

A police officer in Safaga said 435 people had been rescued by Saturday morning. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Safara Port Authority said 389 survivors had been picked up, Egypt's semi-official Middle East News Agency reported Saturday. The discrepancy in survivor tolls could not be immediately reconciled.

Some of the survivors were taken from the ferry's lifeboats, others from inflatable rescue craft dropped into the sea by helicopters, and others were pulled from the water wearing life jackets, the Governor of Red Sea province, Bakr al-Rashidi, told The Associated Press.

Rescue efforts appeared to have been confused. Egyptian officials initially turned down a British offer to divert a warship to the scene and a U.S. offer to send a P3-Orion maritime naval patrol aircraft to the area. The British craft, HMS Bulwark, headed from the southern Red Sea where it was operating, then turned around when the offer was rejected.

But then Egypt reversed itself and asked for both the Orion and the Bulwark to be sent - then finally decided to call off the Bulwark, deciding it was too far away to help, said Lt. Cdr. Charlie Brown of the U.S. 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain. In the end, the Orion - which has the capability to search underwater from the air - was sent, but the Bulwark was not, he said.

Four Egyptian rescue ships reached the scene Friday afternoon, about 10 hours after the 35-year-old ferry likely went down some 95-kilometers (57 miles) off the Egyptian port of Hurghada.

Saudi ships were patrolling waters off their shore to hunt for survivors, but found none, a senior Saudi security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

Mubarak's spokesman said an investigation was under way.

"The swift sinking of the ferry and the lack of sufficient lifeboats suggests there was some violation, but we cannot say until the investigation is complete," said presidential spokesman Suleiman Awad, quoted by MENA.

The ship left Dubah at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday on the 120-mile trip to Safaga, where it was scheduled to arrive at 3 a.m. It disappeared from radar screens between midnight and 2 a.m. and no distress signal was received.

The ferry was carrying 1,200 Egyptian and 112 other passengers as well as 96 crew members, the head of Al-Salaam Maritime Transport Company Mamdouh Ismail told The Associated Press. The passengers included 99 Saudis, three Syrians, two Sudanese, and a Canadian, officials said. It was not clear where the other passengers were from.

Tens of thousands of Egyptians work in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries - many of them from impoverished families in southern Egypt who spend years abroad to earn money. They often travel by ship to and from Saudi Arabia across the Red Sea, a cheaper option than flying. The Saudi port of Dubah is a major transit point for them.

But some on board the ferry were believed to be Muslim pilgrims who had overstayed their visas after last month's hajj pilgrimage to work in the kingdom.

The agent for the ship in Saudi Arabia, Farid al-Douadi, said the vessel had the capacity for 2,500 passengers. But the owner's Web site, http://www.elsalammaritime.com/, said the ship could carry 1,487 passengers and crew.

A ship owned by the same company collided with a cargo ship at the southern entrance to the Suez Canal in October, causing a stampede among passengers trying to escape the sinking ship. Two people were killed and 40 injured.

The Hindu

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Car deck flooding sank ferry: Officer
February 6, 2006

SAFAGA, Egypt: An officer from the Egyptian ferry said the car deck had flooded as crew battled a fire.

Rani Kamal, third officer on the ship, told Al Arabiya from a Saudi hospital that the car deck had flooded during the firefighting operation, making the ship list. Government officials said earlier the blaze began in a vehicle.

“The ferry sank due to firefighting operations. Water flooded the garage (car deck), which is where the fire started, and it pooled on one side,” he said. “Then the water increased and increased until the ship listed sharply. It listed five, then 10 degrees and then 15 and then 25 degrees and that was the beginning of the end,” added Kamal, who was rescued from a dinghy by Saudi coastguards.

He did not explain further. Passengers have also reported both a fire below decks and serious listing. The captain of the ship, Sayed Omar, is unaccounted for. The second officer, who has been rescued, has spoken to the authorities but not to the media.

The Peninsula / Reuters

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Captain blamed for ship's sinking
Correspondents in Safaga
February 6, 2006

AN officer from the Egyptian ferry that sank in the Red Sea, drowning up to 1000 people, said last night that the car deck had flooded as crew battled a fire.

About 800 people are still missing from the ferry al-Salam Boccaccio 98, which caught fire on Thursday on a trip from Duba in Saudi Arabia to Safaga on the Egyptian side of the Red Sea.

Rescuers have brought ashore about 400 survivors and 195 dead bodies.

A further seven people were rescued on yesterday, the state news agency MENA said.

Search operations continued last night but the chances of finding more survivors were diminishing, officials said.

Rani Kamal, third officer on the 36-year-old ship, told the Arabic news channel al-Arabiya from a Saudi hospital that the car deck had flooded during the firefighting operation, making the ship list. Government officials said earlier that the blaze began in a vehicle.

"The ferry sank due to firefighting operations. Water flooded the garage (car deck), which is where the fire started, and it pooled on one side," Mr Kamal said.

"Then the water increased and increased until the ship listed sharply. It listed five, then 10 degrees and then 15 and then 25degrees and that was the beginning of the end," said Mr Kamal, who was rescued from a dinghy by Saudi coastguards.

He did not explain further. Passengers have also reported both a fire below decks and serious listing.

The captain of the ship, Sayed Omar, is unaccounted for. The second officer, who has been rescued, has spoken to the authorities but not to the media.

Passengers accused the captain and crew of negligence, saying Mr Omar abandoned the ship before making sure all the passengers had left the vessel. They said crew prevented them from wearing lifejackets and did not get them into lifeboats.

Egyptian media have accused the operators of making the ferry unsafe by adding extra decks after buying it from Italy and of using a Panamanian flag to avoid safety requirements.

The owners of the ferry, the Cairo-based el Salam Maritime Transport Company, said in a statement that the ferry complied with all international safety regulations and was certified to work in European waters. It said the ferry had gone to Genoa in Italy for the world summit in 2001 and to France and Greece in 2002.

"As for the accident complications, it is quite early to determine the actual causes, as all the authorities and company officers now are mainly concerned with the rescue operations as first priority," the statement added.

The big questions are why the captain and crew did not send out a distress signal to shore stations and why they do not appear to have evacuated the ship in good time. Survivors say the fire burned for several hours before the ferry sank.

Hussein el-Harmil, head of Egypt's maritime safety board, said there had been ample time to organise an evacuation.

"There could have been a fire and loss of communications or poor management by those dealing with the fire and by the captain, leading to hurried actions which could have led to the sinking of this ferry," he told Egyptian television.

Major-General Mahfouz Taha, head of the Red Sea Ports Authority, told the television that the Panamanian flag did not exempt the ferry company from safety regulations.

He confirmed that the first the authorities heard of a possible problem aboard the al-Salam Boccaccio 98 was when the ferry did not turn up in Safaga on time on Friday morning.

At Safaga port, hundreds of relatives of the missing awaited news, some for a third day. Authorities deployed more riot police after clashes on Saturday between police and people angry at receiving so little information.

Yesterday, some of the relatives chanted at the police: "Down with the Interior Ministry, down with Mubarak."

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak visited some of the injured on Saturday and made a short televised speech of condolences.

Ashraf Mohamed, one of those waiting for relatives, said: "There are officials on television but are there any here? No."

Dahi Abdallah Ahmed said: "We are not afraid of the security forces." He had come to Safaga to look for his missing cousin Khaled, who had found a job in Saudi Arabia.

The Australian / AFP

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