February 3, 2006: Ferry carrying 1300+ passengers sinks between Saudi Arabia and Egypt

This morning, a ferry bound from Dubah, Saudi Arabia to Safaga, Egypt, disappeared from radar and is believed to have sunk. Initial reports indicate that over 1300 passengers were on board.

I have spoken with sources in Cairo and they tell me that this is almost certainly not a terror incident. The ship apparantly went down too fast for it to be terrorism. My sources tell me that they have retrieved at least one lifeboat with a handful of survivors and the preliminary indications from those interviews do not indicate any kind of terror attack.

There was pretty bad weather in the area, and the ship was packed to capacity. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that it was overloaded.

Although some of the passengers were returning from Haj, most of the passengers were Egyptians who were working in Saudi Arabia.

Based on what I have seen personally of these ferries, they are usually overloaded, poorly maintained, and the passengers are by and large poor laborers from the lower social strate. Most Egyptians from that social class don't know how to swim; and Egyptian ships aren't known for their access to life jackets or life boats for that matter.