The governor of a Nile Delta province says dozens more are feared dead.
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Egyptian website al-Youm al-Sabaa said the two were being held for allegedly using their fishing boat to ferry migrants from the shore to the ship before its fatal journey. Estimates range between 450 and 600 passengers. They said the traffickers asked the migrants to tell the Italian authorities that they are Syrian refugees.
The Moria camp suffered extensive damage in a fire that broke out late Monday.
“That’s why this is a disaster”, said police spokesman Tarek Attiya.
Naval forces on Friday afternoon pulled 107 bodies from the Mediterranean and they expect more, authorities said. Numerous dead are women and children who were unable to swim away when the boat sank in the Mediterranean.
The perilous sea route across the Mediterranean Sea from Egypt to Italy, which often takes more than 10 days, is just one of several routes used by asylum seekers.
Frontex chief Fabrice Leggeri said in June that the unsafe crossing from Egypt to Italy, which often takes more than 10 days, was becoming increasingly popular.
Many of those who survived found themselves detained by Egyptian law enforcement once on land, with some being handcuffed to their hospital beds.
“Europe should support Egypt and other Middle Eastern states to limit the influx of illegal immigrants who would cause trouble in European states”, he said.
The head of the local council in the area, Ali Abdel-Sattar, said water currents have carried bodies many miles from the site of the sinking.
In a new report on Friday, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said that “as many as 240 [people are still] unaccounted for or presumed missing” from the shipwreck. Some 150 people, mostly Egyptians, survived while numerous dead are women and children who were unable to swim away from the wreckage. The majority are Egyptians, although other survivors include Sudanese, Somalis and Eritreans, the officials said. That figure was expected to rise considerably.
More than 300,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean so far this year from various points of departure, the United Nations said this week.
Deaths, however, are considerably higher than last year’s total of 2,887 on this date.
The number is down from 520,000 in the first nine months of 2015.
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A provincial official put the toll from the incident on Wednesday at 115.
