(i hope to god there are a lot of survivors drowning must be one of the worst ways to die)
An Egyptian passenger ship carrying more than 1,300 people has sunk in the Red Sea, Egyptian maritime officials said, according to BBC.
The ship, ?Al-Salam Boccaccio 98?, sunk 40 miles off the Egyptian port of Hurghada, said the head of the Egyptian Maritime Authority, Mahfouz Taha Marzouk.
The ferry disappeared shortly after leaving the port of Duba in Saudi Arabia on Thursday evening, bound for Safaga in southern Egypt. It was last recorded to be 100km from Duba.
Maritime officials said that helicopters have spotted bodies as well as one lifeboat carrying three people in the same place where the 25-year-old ship was last seen on radar screens. They didn?t say how many bodies were seen.
Egypt's minister of transport, Mohammed Lutfy Mansour, told CNN that four Egyptian frigates have sailed to rescue survivors.
"The Coast Guard is doing every in its power to try to rescue these people," he said.
Most of the passengers are thought to be Egyptians working in Saudi Arabia but some reports say the ship also carried pilgrims returning from the holy city of Mecca after the annual pilgrimage, or Hajj.
The 6,650-tonne al-Salam Boccaccio 98 is owned by the Egyptian company, el-Salam Maritime Transport.
The head of administration at el-Salam Maritime Transport, Adel Shukri, said he was not aware of any SOS from the ship?s crew.
Shipping expert Paul Beaver told the BBC that overloading would not have been a problem as the ship had a capacity of 1,400.
He said there was a possibility that one of more of the vehicles the vessel was transporting could have moved.
A sister ship of the al-Salam 98 sank in the Red Sea in October after a collision, killing two people and wounding 40 others.
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