About 100 protesters shouted angrily at police and criticized Egypt's president yesterday, calling for more information about the 1,000 people still missing and presumed drowned since a ferry sank in the Red Sea. An Italian ship said it had pulled a handful of survivors from the water.
The demonstration outside the port of Safaga -- the ship's original destination from a port in Saudi Arabia -- came a day after protests turned violent on Saturday, with family members throwing stones at police and banging on the doors to the docks.
Yesterday, the demonstrators, who have been waiting in the streets outside Safaga port for almost two days, yelled: "Where is the president, where are our sons? Where are the bodies? We want to know the fate of the children."
"If you don't have the bodies, at least give us [death] certificates and let us go. You have been torturing us for days," shouted Heshmat Mohammed Hassan from Sohag, whose brother is still missing, as he stood in front of a line of policemen welding batons.
Omar Fouad, 31, also from Sohag and waiting to hear the fate of a cousin, said: "All that we want to know is if they are dead or alive. Every day they read the same list of names of survivors. They have been too cold about this."
A total of 379 passengers have been rescued and 136 bodies have been collected since the ship sank early on Friday, with rescue operations still going on, said Bakr el-Rashidi, the governor of Egypt's Red Sea province.
"What I am supposed to do for them?" he asked of family members. "We feel for them and we are announcing the information when we get it."
He said that 11 policemen had been injured by stones on Saturday.
An Italian ship had rescued seven Egyptians and taken in an unidentified body from the sea, and handed them to the Sharm el-Sheik port authority and another ship rescued two other survivors, said Said Abdel-Fattah, director of the South Sinai Medical Center. It was unclear if those were among the 379 passengers cited as rescued.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak flew to Hurghada, about 64km farther north, on Saturday and visited survivors in two hospitals. But television pictures of the visit, which normally would have carried sound of Mubarak's conversations, were silent.
While visitng the hospital, the president ordered that the families of each victim be paid US$5,200 in compensation and the survivors US$2,600 each. In a televised address, the president said, "We pray that God almighty may count [the victims] among his martyrs."
The tragedy struck a deep core of discontent among Egyptians, who are suffering from a considerable economic downturn and increased unemployment.
Tens of thousands of Egyptians work in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries, many of them from impoverished families in southern Egypt who spend years abroad to earn money. They often travel by ship to and from Saudi Arabia.
The Egyptian government's rescue effort got off to a slow start. Initial offers of help from the US and Britain were rejected, and four Egyptian rescue ships reached the scene only by Friday afternoon, about 10 hours after the ferry was believed to have capsized.
The series of tragic errors that led to the ship's sinking began when the crew decided to push across the Red Sea, despite a fire burning in the aging vessel's parking bay, survivors said Saturday. The Al-Salaam Boccaccio 98 had sailed only about 20 miles from the Saudi shore, but its crew instead tried to reach Egypt's shores 110 miles away.
``We told the crew, 'Let's turn back, let's call for help,' but they refused and said everything was under control,'' said passenger Ahmed Abdel Wahab, 30, an Egyptian who works in Saudi Arabia.
Passengers began panicking, and crew members locked up some women in their cabins, Wahab and another survivor said, though many others being treated in Safaga hospitals Saturday said that was not true.
As the blaze grew out of control, passengers not locked in their rooms moved to one side of the 35-year-old vessel. An explosion was heard, and high winds? helped push the unbalanced ship over.
Nauru has started selling passports to fund climate action, but is so far struggling to attract new citizens to the low-lying, largely barren island in the Pacific Ocean. Nauru, one of the world’s smallest nations, has a novel plan to fund its fight against climate change by selling so-called “Golden Passports.” Selling for US$105,000 each, Nauru plans to drum up more than US$5 million in the first year of the “climate resilience citizenship” program. Almost six months after the scheme opened in February, Nauru has so far approved just six applications — covering two families and four individuals. Despite the slow start —
YELLOW SHIRTS: Many protesters were associated with pro-royalist groups that had previously supported the ouster of Paetongtarn’s father, Thaksin, in 2006 Protesters rallied on Saturday in the Thai capital to demand the resignation of court-suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and in support of the armed forces following a violent border dispute with Cambodia that killed more than three dozen people and displaced more than 260,000. Gathered at Bangkok’s Victory Monument despite soaring temperatures, many sang patriotic songs and listened to speeches denouncing Paetongtarn and her father, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and voiced their backing of the country’s army, which has always retained substantial power in the Southeast Asian country. Police said there were about 2,000 protesters by mid-afternoon, although
MOGAMI-CLASS FRIGATES: The deal is a ‘big step toward elevating national security cooperation with Australia, which is our special strategic partner,’ a Japanese official said Australia is to upgrade its navy with 11 Mogami-class frigates built by Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles said yesterday. Billed as Japan’s biggest defense export deal since World War II, Australia is to pay US$6 billion over the next 10 years to acquire the fleet of stealth frigates. Australia is in the midst of a major military restructure, bolstering its navy with long-range firepower in an effort to deter China. It is striving to expand its fleet of major warships from 11 to 26 over the next decade. “This is clearly the biggest defense-industry agreement that has ever
DEADLY TASTE TEST: Erin Patterson tried to kill her estranged husband three times, police said in one of the major claims not heard during her initial trial Australia’s recently convicted mushroom murderer also tried to poison her husband with bolognese pasta and chicken korma curry, according to testimony aired yesterday after a suppression order lapsed. Home cook Erin Patterson was found guilty last month of murdering her husband’s parents and elderly aunt in 2023, lacing their beef Wellington lunch with lethal death cap mushrooms. A series of potentially damning allegations about Patterson’s behavior in the lead-up to the meal were withheld from the jury to give the mother-of-two a fair trial. Supreme Court Justice Christopher Beale yesterday rejected an application to keep these allegations secret. Patterson tried to kill her
RSS