A diving trip ended abruptly off the coast of the Red Sea town of Marsa Alam. The boat carrying 31 tourists and 14 crew members sank this Monday morning at dawn. A distress call was made at 5:30 a.m. (4:30 a.m. in Switzerland), according to a press release from the Red Sea governorate.
Rescue planes and boats dispatched to the site saved 28 people. Operations continue on Monday to find the 17 missing passengers.
If the authorities did not communicate the nationality of the tourists on board or discuss the possible causes of the accident, the Egyptian newspaper “Al-Masri al-Jum” reported that among the passengers were two Swiss. One of the two was rescued while the other is still missing, according to 20 Minuten.
The Sea Story, a cruise ship specializing in diving, left Port Ghalib in southeastern Egypt on Sunday for a multi-day expedition. He was due to reach Hurghada, 200 kilometers further north, on Friday.
“Research continues actively in collaboration with the navy and the armed forces,” said the governor of the region, Amr Hanafi.
According to a manager at a diving center close to the rescue operations, a member of the crew who survived the sinking claimed that the boat had been “hit in the middle of the night by a wave, which overturned the boat. on the side.”
Authorities in Hurghada, the Red Sea capital, suspended maritime activities and closed the city's port on Sunday due to “poor weather conditions.” However, the winds around Marsa Alam remained favorable until Sunday evening, before calming again in the morning, the diving manager explained to AFP.
Monday afternoon, it had become increasingly “difficult to hope that the 17 missing could be rescued after 12 hours spent in the water,” he added, on condition of anonymity.
The Red Sea, one of the main tourist destinations in Egypt, attracts millions of visitors every year. The tourism sector, crucial for this country of 105 million inhabitants in the midst of an economic crisis, employs around two million people and contributes to more than 10% of its GDP.
The accident is at least the third of its kind reported this year near Marsa Alam on the Red Sea. In early November, 30 people were rescued when a diving boat was sinking near a reef. Last June, around twenty French tourists were evacuated unharmed before their boat sank in a similar accident. A year earlier, three British tourists lost their lives when a fire burned their yacht to ashes.
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