Egyptians wait on shore as a coast guard boat arrives carrying the bodies of migrants from a Europe-bound boat that capsized off Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, in Rosetta, Egypt, Thursday, Sept. 22, 2016. “The families of the migrants have been here since dawn, if the general in charge had called the navy then, none of them would have died”.
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The Egyptian military said the boat was 12 nautical miles off the coast near the town of Rosetta when it capsized Wednesday.
The vessel was carrying in total between 400 and 600 people.
Damanhour Prosecution released 160 illegal migrants who were arrested following a boat capsize in Rashid on Wednesday. According to the military, 163 survivors have been rescued. “The boat had more people than it could take”.
On Thursday, the Egyptian naval forces got involved in the search.
Image copyright AFP Image caption The boat was transporting Egyptian, Syrian, Sudanese, Eritrean and Somali migrants. He had agreed with a trafficker to pay an intermediary 50,000 pounds ($5,600) when he reached Italy.
Many of those gathered at the shore where the bodies arrived appeared to be wearing surgical masks to protect them from the smell of decaying bodies. “It’s a wooden boat”, he said.
But angry relatives complained of official inaction, saying it was the local fishermen who had saved lives.
Ahmed’s friend and colleague, 29-year-old Badr Abdel Hafez could not speak at all to Al-Ahram Arabic as he was given sedatives. “I was with my wife and three children”.
Ahmed Gamal Abdel Dayem is another survivor of the boat.
Abdel Dayem chose to travel to Italy after seeing a number of his colleagues travelling and working there. “I thought I would travel to Italy to start a new life”, he said.
Ayman Salem, 22, one of the survivors, told Daily News Egypt that he made a decision to migrate because he could not find a job.
Investigations are likely to focus on a cold storage room used to hold fish, where many victims may have been trapped.
The accident occurred on Wednesday near Kafr al-Shiekh governorate.
According to survivors’ testimonies, the boat remained in the middle of the water, 12 mile west of Rasheed, in the middle of the water boarding people.
Officials said those arrested were crew members on a boat carrying migrants trying to reach Europe.
Egypt saw two uprisings that ousted two heads of the state over the past five years, which led to economic recession with increasing budget deficit, declining foreign investments, lowering foreign currency reserves and deteriorating tourism.
The International Organization for Migration has said that this year over 3,500 have died while attempting to cross the Mediterranean to Europe, with this number “rapidly approaching” the record death toll set last year.
Elhusseini said that supporting Egypt in facing the dilemma of illegal immigration becomes a “must” and fighting the emergence of other refugee-exporting points should become a priority.
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In his speech in front of the United Nations plenary meeting in NY addressing immigration and refugee crisis, Egypt’s Abdel Fattah El-Sisi stated that the country was working on finalising legislation to combat illegal migration.
