Divers missing in Red Sea
2004-08-08 20:36
Cairo - Twelve European tourists - five Britons, five Portuguese and two Belgians - have gone missing while on a diving cruise in shark-infested waters of the Red Sea, Egyptian police said on Sunday.
The divers went missing on Saturday off Quseir near two Red Sea islands known as The Brothers, while 10 other tourists on the cruise had remained on the boat "The Oyster", police said.
An Egyptian army helicopter and 10 boats were scrambled for a search operation but found no trace of the missing divers - neither personal belongings nor equipment.
However, police said an Egyptian aircraft spotted a group of people at a great distance from the area where the 12 were diving.
"It may be that this group is the same as the group that went missing and that the divers formed a human chain so they would be spotted by a plane," a police officer told AFP.
Their embassies had not confirmed the disappearances as of early Sunday evening.
Quseir is some 800km south of the capital Cairo.