OVER 100 FEARED DROWNED AFTER BOAT CAPSIZES
Survivors, some handcuffed to hospital beds, described watching women and children drown after an overcrowded migrant boat capsized off Egypt’s coast, as Egyptian authorities said Thursday 51 bodies had been recovered and an international NGO estimated that more than a hundred people were still missing at sea.
Fishermen in boats were first at the scene early Wednesday, an Egyptian official said, and in the more than five hours it took the coast guard to arrive, they rescued dozens of survivors and retrieved bodies.
The capsizing could potentially rank among the deadliest incidents in the migrant route across the Mediterranean. However, the final death toll will require first obtaining a reliable figure for how many people were on board the boat, and more bodies could yet be recovered at sea or along the coast.
Estimates for the number of passengers aboard the boat ranged between 250, 350 and 600. Survivors said most of those who died were women and children.
The head of the local council in the area, Ali Abdel-Sattar, said the loss of life would have been much heavier had a fishing vessel not been close by when the boat capsized.