Egypt shipwreck: Hundreds missing and four suspects arrested

Egypt arrested four men on suspicion of people trafficking on Thursday after an unprecedented shipwreck off its coast on Wednesday that has left at least 55 people dead and hundreds of others missing.

The four men were remanded in custody on Thursday accused of involuntary manslaughter and people trafficking, officials told Reuters.

Authorities have promised to divert all possible resources to the ongoing rescue mission and bringing those responsible to justice, amid fears that hundreds of people may have drowned. 

So far, 55 bodies have been recovered - including 10 women and one child - and 163 people have been rescued alive. 

Survivors told AFP that there were 450 people on board but other survivors told the BBC on Thursday that up to 600 people were on board, and that they had been made to pay extra for life-jackets before setting off on the perilous journey across the Mediterranean, reportedly headed for Italy.

Of those who were rescued, 111 are known to be Egyptian, while 25 are from neighbouring Sudan. The nationalities of the remainder of those rescued has not been made public. 

More than 150 of those rescued have since been detained by the coastguard’s intelligence agency, and taken to a police station in the port city of Rashid, close to where the boat is thought to have set off from in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Egypt’s popular al-Yaum al-Sabie news site on Thursday published the names, ages and birthplaces of seven men who were injured in the shipwreck but survived. 

Relatives of those still missing, many of them Egyptians from rural areas of the Beheira governorate, gathered on Thursday at a coastguard checkpoint in Burg Rashid, where the Mediterranean meets the River Nile, waiting to hear news of their loved ones.

"I am not going to leave until I see Mohamed," Ratiba Ghonim told Reuters. Her 16-year-old brother had left an impoverished village nearby in search of a better life.

"It is his destiny to leave yesterday and come back dead today. They still haven't pulled his body out of the water."

Egypt’s prime minister, Ismail Sharif, on Thursday pledged to divert all possible resources to an ongoing search and rescue off the Egyptian coast, and said those responsible for the disaster must be held accountable. 

Increasing numbers of people have been leaving from Egypt, hoping to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.

Frontex, the Europe-wide border agency, says 12,000 people arrived in Italy from Egypt between January and August, compared to 7,000 in the same period in 2015.