CAIRO: Rescuers recovered seven more bodies from the Nile after a party boat collided with a cargo ship earlier this week, raising the death toll to 36, Egyptian officials said Sunday.
The accident, the deadliest such incident on the Nile in years, occurred late Wednesday when the victims were celebrating an engagement on a vessel that was struck by a cargo ship.
The captain of the cargo boat and his assistants were arrested following the accident in the Warraq district north of Cairo. They have been charged with manslaughter.
“We have recovered 36 bodies and the majority of the victims are children and women,” General Magdi Al-Shalaqami from the Interior Ministry told AFP, raising the death toll from an earlier figure of 29.
Rescuers were still searching for more bodies, he said, with search operations expanded to other provinces.
Health Ministry spokesman Hossam Abdel Ghaffar said among those dead were 20 children, some aged as young as four.
In a meeting on Sunday the cabinet took several decisions “in order to achieve discipline on the Nile,” a government statement said.
The cabinet banned all night-time movement of cargo ships on the Nile in and around Cairo until September, the statement said.
It banned use of loud speakers on vessels hired for private ceremonies and on ferries transporting people. The cabinet also decided not to build new berths along the river.
The Nile, which runs along the length of Egypt, is dotted with cargo ships, party boats and fishing vessels.
In 2011, at least 22 people drowned in southern Egypt’s Beni Suef province when a bus they were in fell into the Nile from a ferry which crashed into the river bank.
Toll rises to 36 in Nile boat tragedy: Officials
Toll rises to 36 in Nile boat tragedy: Officials
Lebanon says one killed in Israeli strike on Palestinian refugee camp
- NNA said “an Israeli drone” targeted a neighborhood of the Ain Al-Helweh camp
- It reported that one person was killed and an unspecified number wounded
SIDON, Lebanon: An Israeli strike on Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp killed one person on Friday, state media reported, with the Israeli army saying it had targeted the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
The official National News Agency said “an Israeli drone” targeted a neighborhood of the Ain Al-Helweh camp, which is located on the outskirts of the southern city of Sidon.
It reported that one person was killed and an unspecified number wounded.
An AFP correspondent saw smoke rising from a building in the densely populated camp as ambulances headed to the scene.
The Israeli army said in a statement that its forces “struck a Hamas command center from which terrorists operated.”
Israel has kept up regular strikes on Lebanon despite a November 2024 ceasefire that sought to halt more than a year of hostilities with the militant group Hezbollah.
Israel has also struck targets belonging to Hezbollah’s Palestinian ally Hamas, including in a raid on Ain Al-Helweh last November that killed 13 people.
The UN rights office had said 11 children were killed in that strike, which Israel said targeted a Hamas training compound, though the group denied it had military installations in Palestinian camps in Lebanon.
In October 2023, Hezbollah began launching rockets at Israel in support of Hamas at the outset of the Gaza war, triggering months of exchanges that culminated in two months of all-out war in Lebanon.
On Sunday, Lebanon said an Israeli strike near the Syrian border in the country’s east killed four people, as Israel said it targeted operatives from Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad.
