A boat carrying migrants heading to Europe capsized Wednesday off Egypt’s coast near Alexandria, killing at least 42 people, according to Egyptian officials.
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A senior official told EFE news that the boat was carrying mainly Egyptians, Syrians, Sudanese, Eritrean and Somali migrants.
Prosecutors ordered that the four crew who were rescued from the shipwreck be detained for four days pending an investigation.
Survivors said up to 450 migrants were on board the fishing vessel when it sank about 12 kilometres (eight miles) off the coast of Rosetta, an Egyptian Mediterranean port city, on Wednesday morning.
The victims so far include one child, 10 women and 31 young men, an official in Rosetta told AFP.
The military has said 163 survivors have been rescued so far, with a health ministry official saying 51 bodies had been retrieved.
“Initial information indicates that the boat sank because it was carrying more people than its limit. The captain couldn’t move the boat; it kept swaying until it fell on its side”, Darwish said, as he lay in a blue gown on a bed at the public hospital in the coastal village of Burg Rashed.
Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail pledged the government’s full support for the continuing rescue mission and said those responsible must be brought to justice. The military said in a statement it was conducting the rescue operation.
He said the migrants were from several African countries.
Neighbouring Libya is still the starting point for most efforts to reach Italy by boat from north Africa but, after years of lawless chaos in the region, a rising number of people are setting out from Egypt instead.
Mina Fawzi, a 19-year-old survivor, told AP on Thursday that there were already about 250 people on the boat when the smugglers brought along another 250. More than 12,000 migrants arrived in Italy from Egypt between January and September, compared to 7,000 in the same period a year ago, it said.
About 150 survivors were detained in a police station in Rosetta, a lot of them young men.
More than 10,000 people have died crossing the Mediterranean to Europe since 2014, according to the UN.
The number of migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean from Egypt to Europe has increased significantly in the past year, European Union border agency Frontex recently said.
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The European Union launched “Operation Sophia” previous year to destroy smuggler boats that could be used to ferry migrants across the sea.
