One hundred and sixty-four bodies have been found after a boat carrying hundreds of migrants capsized off an Egyptian coastal town this week, a provincial official said on Friday.
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The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has expressed sadness at the loss of over 150 lives in a boat disaster in the Mediterranean off the coast of Rosetta, Egypt.
He also said that the search operation is still ongoing.
It is unclear where the boat was headed, but officials said it was heading for Italy.
There are many children and women among the victims, al-Ahram reported.
He said the boat could be 16 metres below sea level.
“With this rate, 2016 will be the deadliest year for the Mediterranean”, the UNHCR spokesperson, William Spindler, said in Geneva earlier this week.
Illegal migration via Egyptian Mediterranean Sea shores rose over the past few years in attempts to flee hard economic conditions in the most populous Arab country.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has ordered authorities on Saturday to punish those responsible for the capsizing of a ship which resulted in the deaths of more than 160 migrants, as families demanded the bodies of their loved ones.
He added that numerous refugees were believed to have been “stored in the bottom of the boat, in the fridge”.
They say more than 6,600 refugees drowned in the Mediterranean in 2015 and the first half of this year.
Egypt’s prosecution ordered the detention of the four crew members for 15 more days pending investigation over charges of human trafficking, wrongful death, wrongful injury and using a fishing boat for another goal.
Fishermen said they had difficulty collecting the badly decomposed bodies.
The intense smell of decay filled the air and many covered their faces with masks.
A statement Friday said that police arrested a 35-year-old man from the capital Tirana, who they say was transporting 22 Afghan citizens from neighboring Greece toward Kosovo. Some 150 people, mostly Egyptians, survived while numerous dead are women and children who were unable to swim away from the wreckage.
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The Egyptian military has recurrently announced foiling illegal immigration attempts by mostly Egyptians via the Mediterranean to Europe and mostly Africans via the Sinai Peninsula to Israel.
