An Egyptian mother reacts beside the body of her son who was on a boat carrying migrants which capsized off Egypt’s coast, in Al-Beheira, Egypt, September 22, 2016.
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The boat carrying around 600 refugees to Europe capsized in the Mediterranean Sea off Burg Rashid, a village in the northern Beheira Province.
There are many children and women among the victims, al-Ahram reported.
But despite the lower numbers attempting the crossing, fatality rates had risen, with 2016 on track to be “the deadliest year on record in the Mediterranean Sea”, said the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR). Now 150 people (of whom 43 were non-Egyptians, including 26 Sudanese, 13 Eritreans, 2 Somalis, 1 Syrian, and 1 Ethiopian) have been rescued in an operation by the Egyptian authorities involving the army and navy.
Egyptian rescue workers have pulled out from the Mediterranean Sea the bodies of more than a hundred refugees whose boat recently capsized near the coast of Egypt.
“There have been 53 bodies recovered as of 11 am (0900 GMT) on Friday”, said health ministry official Adel Khalifa. “The ongoing civil war and the expansion of the Islamic State (IS) made Libya unappealing for smugglers and even immigrants”, said Fadi Elhusseini, researcher and expert in Middle East affairs.
The accident comes months after the European Union border agency Frontex warned that growing numbers of Europe-bound refugees were using Egypt as a departure point for the risky journey.
“On Thursday, Egyptian authorities jailed the four crew members pending an inquiry into the accident, which is the deadliest of its kind in recent years, ” he said.
At a small pier called el-Borg, hundreds of families gathered hoping to identify the bodies of their loved ones.
It said that the boat passengers included Egyptians, Syrians, Sudanese nationals, Somalis and Eritreans.
He said the boat may have sunk more than 50ft below sea level. Women screamed while relatives pushed and shoved swarming ambulances headed to the hospital.
A total of 164 people have been rescued including the four crew members of the boat, 117 Egyptian migrants and 43 foreign migrants. Fishing boats in the vicinity were the first to provide help.
After his release, survivor Ahmed Darwish commented, “My advice is that no one should undertake this risk, and especially anyone who saw these things, they will never do it again”. Some of the interviewees said the traffickers asked for $6,250 per family, to be paid on arrival in Italy.
Greek authorities say they have scrapped plans to use chartered ferries to house refugees and other migrants from a fire-damaged camp on the island of Lesbos.
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Illegal immigration via Egyptian Mediterranean Sea shores rose over the past few years in attempts to reach Europe and flee hard economic conditions in the financially-struggling Arab country, where unemployment rate hit 12.5 percent, according to official reports.
