On Tuesday, the military arrested 68 people in the same area off the coast of Matrouh on a boat headed for Europe.
Advertisement
The International Organisation for Migration urged Egypt to impose tougher penalties on human traffickers and address the concerns driving people to undertake the perilous journey. Egypt’s state-run news agency reported arrest warrants were issued for five other people.
“The death toll is going to rise”, a medical source said.
According to BBC online, the boat was being held off the coast while increasing numbers of migrants were being brought to it. “It hasn’t been opened and there must be a lot of people inside”.
Survivors said up to 450 migrants had been aboard the fishing vessel when it sank about 12 kilometres (eight miles) off the coast of Rosetta, an Egyptian Mediterranean port city.
Mohammed Sultan, the governor of Beheira province, where Rosetta is located, told The Associated Press that authorities did not have a precise number for those who were on board the vessel, but that 250-400 seemed likely.
He said 157 people were rescued.
Reports from Egypt say 52 bodies have been recovered from the Mediterranean but hundreds are still missing. There were also 25 Sudanese, while the rest were sub-Saharan Africans and Syrians.
The search for bodies and survivors has been expanded around the spot where the vessel capsized, he added.
Many survivors were in police custody yesterday.
Mohamed, a 28-year-old Egyptian welder, managed to stay afloat until a rescue boat found him, but lost his wife and son during the incident. ‘I am glad I survived, but I regret not being able to rescue my fellows, ‘ he said. He said on bigger boats, the space below deck at the front of the vessel is often packed tight with people.
One survivor, Ahmed Darwish, blamed traffickers for the tragedy, saying overcrowding caused the boat to capsize, and accused authorities of not reacting quickly enough.
“Usually it works that way: The migrants reach them with dinghies, with rubber boats”, he said.
“There is no way to end this except by uprooting its causes; and this will be by reaching political agreements, not by closing borders”, he said. At least 10 women and two children were among the victims. “Those. that knew how to swim moved away (from the boat), leaving behind women and small children”, he said.
But despite the lower numbers attempting the risky 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.
The accident comes months after the EU’s border agency Frontex warned that growing numbers of migrants bound for Europe were turning to Egypt as a departure point for the unsafe sea journey.
Advertisement
More than 2,800 deaths were recorded between January and June, compared with 1,838 during the same period previous year.
