Angry survivors blame crew
2006-02-04 13:03
Safaga, Egypt - Surviving passengers of an ageing Egyptian ferry that sank in the Red Sea, leaving hundreds feared dead, blamed the crew on Saturday for failing to turn around when a fire broke out and monopolising the life rafts.
"Two hours after our departure from (the Saudi port of) Duba thick smoke started to come out of the engines," 34-year-old Egyptian Raafat al-Sayyed told AFP.
He said the 1 300 passengers on board the Al-Salam Boccaccio 98 were told to gather on the decks so that crew members could extinguish the blaze as the ship started to list dangerously.
"But the fire continued for a long time, and they (the crew) kept on saying that they were getting it under control," said Kamel Mohammad Abdel Askari, 48, another Egyptian.
The survivors, being treated in hospitals at Hurghada on the Red Sea, said the Panamanian-flagged ferry continued on its voyage, listing to the port side, before suddenly going down in no more than 10 minutes.
Speaking to Nile News television, Transport Minister Mohammed Mansur confirmed that the sinking of the vessel may have been caused by a fire that broke out after one of the engines broke down.
Survivors being rushed to hospital failed to understand why the crew refused to turn around when the Saudi coast was still relatively close and described the dying minutes of the floating inferno.
"The first person to get into a lifeboat was the captain," said Sayyed.
The captain was however numbered among the missing. Some of those rescued said they had seen him fall from his lifeboat.
Sayyed, who survived thanks to a lifevest, lost touch with four travelling companions. "There were not enough lifeboats for everybody."
Another survivor, 26-year-old Egyptian Kadhafi Abdel Monem, agreed about the lack of lifeboats. "I clung to an empty barrel," he said from his hospital bed.
"The fire, the smoke, the people climbing up to the bridge, the shipwreck. A real nightmare," he murmured as a medical team bustled around him.
Survivors said the fire broke out at around 19:30 on Thursday and that the 36-year-old ship finally sank four hours later. It now rests 2 500 feet deep at the bottom of the Red Sea.
"I spent nearly four hours in the water with my lifejacket before being pulled into a lifeboat," said Abdel Rahim Ahmad, 49, adding that many women and children were on board the ill-fated ferry.
With the fate of around 1 000 still unknown 30 hours after the tragedy, relatives gathered in an area on the edge of Safaga port usually dedicated to Egyptian pilgrims returning from Mecca started venting their anger.