CAIRO, Egypt (CNN) -- An aging Egyptian passenger ferry loaded to near capacity with about 1,400 people and dozens of vehicles sank Friday in the Red Sea, an official said.

Egyptian maritime officials told state-run Nile TV that 100 survivors had been rescued. At least 100 bodies have been recovered, Egyptian officials said.

The ferry was carrying was carrying about 1,300 passengers and a crew of about 100, Egyptian officials said.

Nile TV said the passengers included at least 115 foreigners, 99 of them Saudis.

The ferry -- the Al Salam Boccaccio 98 -- left Dubah, western Saudi Arabia, en route to Egypt's southern port of Safaga, a spokesman for the El Salam Maritime Transport Co. told CNN.

The Al Salam Boccaccio 98 disappeared at midnight (5 p.m. Thursday ET) from radar screens in the Red Sea off the Saudi coast, spokesman Adel Shoukri said from Cairo.

Egyptian Minister of Transport Mohamed Loutfy Mansour said that at the time the ferry disappeared, the seas were high and the weather was bad with high winds.

Egypt's state news agency MENA said another ferry in the area received a distress call from Al Salam Boccaccio's captain who said the ship was in danger of sinking, Reuters reported. MENA did not mention how the second ferry reacted to the message.

Adel Shukri, head of administration at the Cairo headquarters of el-Salam Maritime Navigation, said coastal stations did not receive a SOS message from the crew, Reuters reported.

Mansour said four frigates and a navy destroyer converged on the site, about 57 miles from Hurghada, where they joined a search-and-rescue effort. Hurghada is off Egypt's north-central Red Sea coast, below the Sinai Peninsula. (Map of the area)

The Egyptian government has called their Saudi counterparts in the port of Jedda to seek help, Mansour said.

The U.S. and British militaries were in touch with the Egyptian government. U.S. military officials in Washington early Friday said a Maritime Patrol Aircraft would be sent, and that the British Royal Navy was sending the HMS Bulwark, an assault ship.

But military officials later said both were canceled. The U.S. and British military have a very sparse presence in the remote Red Sea region.

Separately, the U.S. State Department said there were no Americans among the ferry's passengers.

The 35-year-old liner had been due to arrive at Safaga at 3 a.m. local time, the officials added.

Rear Adm. Mahfouz Marzouk, head of the Suez Port Authority, said a collision along the congested waterway could not have been to blame.

"It is not possible because we covered all these areas with radar," he told CNN. "If it were something like that, of course, we would have another ship or a distress signal or something like that. We didn't pick up any contact by wireless communication or by radar."

It was not immediately clear what caused the ferry to sink.

"Maybe, when we succeed (in retrieving) some of the survivors, they'll tell us what happened," he added.

Families returning home
Most of the those on board were believed to be Egyptian workers returning from Saudi Arabia. Others were pilgrims who had overstayed their visas when the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca ended.

CNN's Ben Wedeman said that it was the end of the mid-term break in Egyptian schools and some of those aboard were families of Egyptian workers living in Saudi Arabia returning at the end of the break.

Wederman said there was a record of fatal accidents in that part of the Red Sea. He said that in 1991 more than 500 people were killed when a ferry hit a coral reef outside the same Egyptian port.

David Osler, of Lloyd's List, told CNN while it was too early to speculate on the cause of the ship's disappearance, the vessel was a roll-on roll-off ferry -- a design known to suffer stability problems.

"Once a small amount of water gets on board it can set up an uncontrollable rocking that causes rapid capsize," he said.

He said safety standards in the developed world had improved markedly in the after the Herald of Free Enterprise sank at Zeebrugge, Belgium, in 1987, killing 193 passengers.

"This vessel was pensioned off from Italy. It may have been overloaded," he said.

The ship is owned by the Egyptian firm El-Salaam Maritime Transport Co.

A company spokesman said the ship was certified to carry passengers until 2010 and was fully compliant with maintenance regulations.

The ship, which was built in 1970 and flies a Panamanian flag, was involved in a collision in 1999, he said.

Anyone heard the cause?

I would say that a lack of news would say it was probably just a poorly maintained ship sinking. If it was terrorism, there would be some reports by now, because they DID find a few survivors.

Now this one we can definitely blame on the Jews. This isn't the first time those sneaky semites drowned Egyptians in that sea...

Nothing yet. No distress signal. CNN report says the company has a history of fatal accidents, and the fact that this was a car/truck ferry meant that a faulty ramp may cause the boat to sink a lot quicker than other boats.

Officials: Fire Made Ship Sink

SAFAGA, Egypt (CNN) -- Egypt's transport minister has said a blaze aboard an Egyptian ferry set off a sequence of events that led it to sink Friday in the Red Sea, causing what officials fear may be around 1,000 deaths.

The minister said Saturday an initial investigation showed a truck erupted in flames in the hold of the ship.

After the crew tried to put out the fire, the captain's efforts to turn the boat around caused it to tilt in heavy winds and ultimately sink.

Some survivors later described the tilting, saying it occurred slowly before the vessel sank.

Some survivors at a hospital in Hurghada told CNN they saw smoke, which smelled as if it came from an electrical fire, about two and a half hours into the trip. Hurghada is off Egypt's north-central Red Sea coast.

The seas were rough when the Al Salam Boccaccio 98 capsized, said Transport Minister Mohamed Loutfy Mansour.

Rescuers who plucked nearly 400 survivors from the 60-degree waters were continuing to search Saturday for nearly 1,000 other people feared dead.

State-run Nile Television said Saturday there were 389 survivors. By daylight Saturday, 185 bodies had been pulled from the 3,000-foot-deep waters, officials said.

Rescuers were pessimistic about finding more people alive. "There aren't expected to be many survivors, because it's been so long since the ship went down," a source close to the operations told Reuters.

In Safaga, one hysterical woman hammered on an iron gate to the port, where survivors from the Al Salam Boccaccio 98 ferry were being brought ashore.

Some angry relatives threw rocks at police as they awaited information about passengers on the ferry.

The port officials were not distributing lists of survivor names to the crowd outside, who repeatedly tried to break through a line of police with sticks.

"No one is telling us anything," said Shaaban el-Qott, from the southern city of Qena, who was furious after waiting all night at the gates of the port in Safaga for news of his cousin.

"All I want to know (is) if he's dead or alive," he told The Associated Press.

Stability questions

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak flew to the port of Hurghada, about 60 kilometers (40 miles) further north of Safaga, on Saturday to oversee the rescue operation and visit survivors.

He told reporters the government would pay emergency compensation to survivors and relatives of the dead. Survivors are to receive 15,000 Egyptian pounds ($2,600 U.S.) and families of the dead are to get twice that.

A Maritime Transport spokesman said the Al Salam Boccaccio 98 was certified to carry passengers until 2010 and was fully compliant with maintenance regulations.

However, one man in the crowd told CNN he had taken the same ship on the same route a month ago and that the ship appeared overloaded on that trip, packed with passengers and laden with eight large trucks filled with freight, the man said.

He also said the clasps that secured lifeboats to the ship were rusted.

Other former passengers also reported that the ferry was antiquated.

"It's a roll-on, roll-off ferry, and there is big question mark over the stability of this kind of ship," David Osler, of the London shipping paper Lloyds List, told AP.

"It would only take a bit of water to get on board this ship and it would be all over. ... The percentage of this type of ferry involved in this type of disaster is huge."
Offer rejected

Egypt's state-run Nile TV said the passengers included at least 115 foreigners, about 100 of them Saudi nationals. Most of those on board were Egyptian laborers returning from jobs in Saudi Arabia.

Four Egyptian frigates and a navy destroyer, along with coast guard boats and helicopters were at the search-and-rescue site, about 95 kilometers ( 57 miles) from Hurghada, said Adel Shoukri, a spokesman for the transport company.

Egyptian government officials asked mariners in the Saudi port of Jeddah for help, and Saudi Arabia sent two vessels.

Egypt turned down Britain's offer to send an amphibious assault ship, saying the ship was too large for the search effort.

The ship, which was built in 1970 and launched in Italy, flew a Panamanian flag.

It was refurbished in 1990 at an Egyptian shipyard. The vessel was involved in a collision in 1999, according to a ferry company spokesman.

this is really sad. i'm surprised more people haven't echoed in on this thread. RIP to the ones that didn't make it

Very sad.

* Note to self: DO NOT get on a ferry if ever in the middle east.

Or Western sub-Saharan Africa. Or Bangladesh.

Damn. I knew I shouldn't have drawn that cartoon mocking this tragedy.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/02/ ... index.html

Crowd trashes Egypt ferry office
Hopes fade for vessel's estimated missing 800

Monday, February 6, 2006; Posted: 2:38 a.m. EST (07:38 GMT)

Angry relatives pelt police with rocks outside the port in Safaga in Egypt.

SAFAGA, Egypt (AP) -- Hundreds of relatives of passengers drowned on a Red Sea ferry attacked the offices of the owners Monday, throwing its furniture into the street and burning the company's signboard.

Riot police intervened and fired tear gas to restore order.

etc...

It would have been sweet if the Katrina victims had trashed FEMA!

Unless you're on the Dead Sea, anyway.

I just read they found a boy a live in the water after something like 36 hours in the ocean.

This whole thing was a complete tradgedy. The way the people are being treated by the officials is disgraceful. They want answers and information, and they get the riot police