Dozens die off Egypt as migrant vessel capsizes
MUTWALI Mohamed watched helplessly as his wife and son slipped under the waves after the crowded boat the migrants had boarded capsized off Egypt’s coast on its voyage to Italy.
They were among 51 people confirmed dead in the disaster which unfolded on Wednesday. Dozens more are feared drowned.
Mohamed, 28, an Egyptian welder, managed to stay afloat until a rescue boat found him.
He was arrested for trying to leave the country illegally and now lies handcuffed to a hospital bed in the Mediterranean port city of Rosetta, weeping for his lost family.
“I risked my life and the lives of my family so they could have a nice life.”
Mohamed said the rising cost of living had prompted him to leave behind his homeland and head for Italy, where he would have looked for a “job doing anything”.
He had agreed with a trafficker to pay an intermediary £50 000 (R893 000) when he reached Italy.
“I was the only one who survived. I wish I hadn’t survived.”
Next to him, also handcuffed to a bed, a weeping Badr Abdel Hafiz, 28, said about 400 people had been on board the boat.
“I was with my wife and three children. They all died,” he said.
About 150 survivors were detained at a police station in Rosetta, most of them young men.
There were Egyptians, Sudanese and Syrians. Dozens were sprawled out in the hallways, where police offered them water and clothes.
Mohamed Ahmed, 17, had borrowed £20 000 (R357 000) to pay for passage on the doomed boat.
He said he was among about 100 people in a hold used to store fish when the vessel capsized.
Others, like Sumuya of Sudan, wanted to join family who had already made the trip. Her husband is in Europe.
On a beach near Rosetta yesterday, a small crowd gathered, some reading verses from the Koran and others desperately seeking information on relatives who might have been on board.
Asylum-seekers have been seeking other ways to reach Europe since March, when Balkan countries closed the popular overland route and the EU agreed on a deal with Turkey to halt departures.