The boat sank on Wednesday off Burg Rashid, a village in Egypt’s northern Beheira province where the Nile meets the Mediterranean.
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The boat is said to have capsized after a final group of some 150 people were crammed on board. It appears the ship capsized “because it was carrying more people than its limits” and Egyptian official told Reuters.
More and more people have been trying to cross to Italy from the African coast over the summer months, particularly from Libya, where people-traffickers operate with relative impunity. Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said the country will do whatever it can to rescue those who are still missing.
Egypt’s official news agency said the boat was carrying 600 people when it sank.
Frontex director Fabrice Leggeri said that work was being done to determine whether there was a link between the drop in numbers departing from Turkey – where only about 50 people a day are trying to make the journey to reach Greece compared to thousands this time past year – and the increase in numbers from Egypt.
Some teenage Egyptian survivors, huddled together in the basement of a police station, told the BBC they were trying to reach Italy to find work.
The head of the local council in the area, Ali Abdel-Sattar, said the loss of life would have been much heavier had a fishing vessel not been close by when the boat capsized.
He said migrants go out to sea in small groups and gather at bigger boats, which begin the journey to Europe when traffickers believe they have gathered enough passengers.
Egyptian authorities, meanwhile, arrested four people in connection with the incident and issued arrest warrants for five more. They said the four were members of the vessel’s crew and were remanded in police custody for four days pending further investigation.
Migrants are leaving African countries in large numbers for Europe, often in overcrowded, rickety boats.
But despite the lower numbers attempting the unsafe sea crossing, fatality rates had risen, with 2016 on track to be “the deadliest year on record in the Mediterranean Sea”, said the UN’s refugee agency, the UNHCR.
More than 2,800 deaths were recorded between January and June, versus 1,838 during the same period a year ago. Some of those rescued after suffering injuries were taken to hospitals, where they lay handcuffed to beds under police guard.
Families, on the other hand, have accused the authorities of inaction. “There were many in the boat’s hold who died. And this is what caused the catastrophe”, he said.
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Mohamed Ahmed, a 17-year-old student, had borrowed 20,000 pounds to pay for passage on the doomed boat.
