September 24: The death toll in this week’s latest shipwreck rose to about 300 on Friday after the sinking of an overloaded ship off Egypt’s Mediterranean city of Rosetta.
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Mohamed Sultan, governor of the Delta Beheira province, later told journalists that 18 more bodies had been recovered.
Officials say the boat was carrying Egyptian, Sudanese, Eritrean and Somali migrants, and that they believed it was heading for Italy.
He did not provide a breakdown of the survivors’ nationalities.
Local council chairman Ali Abdel-Sattar said currents had carried the bodies many miles from the site of the sinking.
State-run newspaper al-Ahram said online that those rescued were 121 Egyptians, including four crew members, and 43 foreign migrants. He also said that the search operation is still ongoing.
Authorities have struggled to give accurate figures for the number of people on board the capsized vessel.
“The death toll from the illegal migrant boat that capsized off the coast of Rosetta. has reached 133”, the health ministry said in a statement.
Authorities succeeded in rescuing 163 people, including 123 Egyptians, from the accident.
Survivors and relatives had said earlier that the boat sank around 5:30 a.m. on Wednesday and that it took coast-guard crews about six hours to come to the rescue.
The spokesman confirmed that among those on board were people from Egypt, Syria, Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea.
“Today, four bodies, including two Egyptian children, were found 20km to the east”, he told reporters.
Those confirmed dead include 10 women and a baby, taking the estimated number of migrants to die in the Mediterranean so far this year to more than 3,500.
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Regional turmoil and high unemployment rates are said to be the main factors behind the risky journeys.
