THE crew of a burning Egyptian ferry listing to one side in the Red Sea instructed passengers to go to the opposite side in a vain attempt to keep it from sinking with 1,414 people on board, exhausted survivors said yesterday.

There were reports that the captain had fled in a lifeboat, abandoning passengers to their fate. He has been officially listed among the missing.

Two cousins identified only as Yasser, 21, and Talaa, 23, described the dramatic last moments of the ageing ferry Al-Salam Boccaccio 98 from their hospital beds.

For nearly two hours the ferry continued towards Egypt with its one working engine as the crew tried to put out a fire that had broken out on the car deck, they said.

Early Friday morning, minutes after the engine failed, the ferry began to flip over. Passengers and crew screamed and jumped into the shark-infested waters. Many wore lifejackets but few were able to reach the inflatable lifeboats.

“During the scramble everyone thought of himself. It was a fight to survive,” said Yasser.

The two cousins waited for rescue from 3am to 9pm on Friday. “Our lifeboat was stuffed with more than 50 people and was filled with water,” said Yasser. “We had to keep bailing with buckets and throwing dead bodies over the side as the day turned into night.”

More than 1,000 people are feared to have drowned when the ferry sank on a 120-mile crossing from the Saudi Arabian port of Duba to Safaga in Egypt, with 1,310 passengers and a crew of 104 on board.

Most of the passengers were Egyptian workers who opted for the sea crossing because it is cheaper than flying, although the route has a poor safety record and is known as the “dead road”.

Hopes of finding more survivors faded yesterday afternoon. Thirty-six hours after the sinking, only 376 survivors and 200 bodies had been found.

Survivors began arriving at Hurghada general hospital at 3am yesterday. The first was a 13-year-old Saudi girl named Alaa El Magadi. Wrapped in blankets on a stretcher, she appeared to be in shock as doctors hurried her away.

Others walked unaided and were furious with what they believed to be the neglect and disorganisation of the crew.

Survivors claimed the crew had dismissed pleas to turn back to Saudi Arabia after a fire started about 90 minutes after the ferry had left Duba. Some passengers wearing lifejackets were told to take them off.

Girgis Rifaat, 30, an Egyptian labourer, said there were not enough lifeboats. He said he had spent 18 hours awaiting rescue on a boat holding more than 50 survivors crammed so close together they had difficulty breathing.

“We bailed water and prayed,” he said. “As many as 25 died on the boat and we dumped them overboard. If the boat had returned to Saudi Arabia when the fire first broke out, the tragedy might have been averted.”

Amid the rescue efforts there were mounting claims that the 35-year-old vessel, which had been used in Europe before being sold to the Egyptian owner, El Salam Maritime, was unsafe and inadequately maintained.

Yesterday Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, visited survivors and promised a swift and full inquiry. His spokesman said: “The speed at which the ship sank and the fact there were not enough liferafts confirm that there was a (safety) problem.”

One of several unanswered questions yesterday was what had happened to any distress messages. Mamdouh Oraby, the fleet manager, said: “It looks abnormal because there was no distress message.” But one survivor told Egyptian television that the ferry had sent out SOS messages and nobody had answered. Rescue operations did not begin until 10 hours after the sinking.

The rescue co-ordination centre at RAF Kinloss, in northeast Scotland, had picked up a distress beacon from the vessel just before midnight GMT and had alerted the Egyptian authorities via the French. A passing vessel also reported picking up a distress signal.

In Duba, Captain Mahmud al-Harbi, director-general of the port, suggested that the accident may have occurred because of overloading. Some reports said that there were 220 cars on board the roll-on roll-off ferry, a type known to be vulnerable in heavy seas if water gets on to the car deck.

Additional reporting: Syed Rashid Husain, Duba

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