Egyptian passenger ship sinks in Red Sea

SAFAGA, Egypt — An Egyptian passenger ferry carrying nearly 1,500 people sank in the Red Sea early Friday during bad weather, and rescue ships and helicopters pulled dozens of survivors and bodies from the water. At least 203 escaped on lifeboats, the transport minister said.

Most of the passengers were apparently Egyptian workers returning from their jobs in Saudi Arabia. At least four Saudi and four Egyptian ships were involved in the search effort, arriving about 10 hours after the 35-year-old ferry was believed to have sank.

As darkness descended Friday at the site, some 57 miles off the Egyptian port of Hurghada, there were fears the death toll could be extremely high.

The ferry did not have enough lifeboats, a spokesman for President Hosni Mubarak said.

"The swift sinking of the ferry and the lack of sufficient lifeboats suggests there was some violation, but we cannot say until the investigation is complete," said presidential spokesman Suleiman Awad, quoted by the semiofficial news agency MENA.

Any survivors still in the Red Sea could go into shock as temperatures fell in the already cold waters, which average in the upper 60s in February. The waters in the area are up to 3,000 feet deep.

Egyptian regulations require life jackets on the boat, but implementation of safety procedures are often lax. It was not known if the ship had enough life jackets and whether the passengers put them on when the ship sank.

Rescue efforts appeared confused. Egyptian officials initially turned down a British offer to divert a warship to the scene to help out and a U.S. offer to send a P3-Orion maritime naval patrol aircraft to the area. The British craft, HMS Bulwark, headed toward from the southern Red Sea where it was operating, then turned around when the offer was rejected.

But then Egypt reversed itself and asked for both the Orion and the Bulwark to be sent, said Cdr. Jeff Breslau, a spokesman for the U.S. 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain. The Bulwark is part of a Dutch-controlled multinational task force, which includes assets from the 5th Fleet and British navy.

Saudi ships were patrolling waters off their shore to hunt for survivors, but found none, a senior Saudi security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.