CAIRO – A cargo ship sank during bad weather in the Red Sea on Monday, and at least two crew members drowned. Two nearby ships and a helicopter managed to pluck 10 men from the choppy water, according to an official and Egyptian media.
Fourteen crew members remained missing.
The ship, with a 26-member crew, had passed the Suez Canal and was en route to the United Arab Emirates carrying a cargo of 6,500 tons (5,900 metric tons) of silica sand meant for manufacturing glass, said Maj. Gen. Mamdouh Deraz, head of the Egyptian Red Sea Port Authority.
He said the Ibn Battuta sent a distress message early Monday while sailing near the Egyptian port city of Safaga in the Red Sea.
Egypt’s official MENA news agency said a nearby vessel, the Sultan, managed to rescue six crew. An Egyptian helicopter saved three more crew members, the report said.
Deraz said another passing merchant ship found the two bodies of the drowned crew while a third saved one more crew member. He said the number of the surviving crew now stood at 10 but that the rescue operation was still ongoing.
The ship, Ibn Battuta, is named for a 14th century traveler from present-day Morocco whose journeys encompassed most of the Islamic world and beyond.
The sinking off Safaga took place near the location where a ferry sank in Feb. 2006, after a fire broke out on the vessel. About 1,000 people mostly Egyptian workers returning home from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations died at the time amid botched rescue attempts by the Egyptians.
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