A senior security official in Damanhur (Beheira Governorate), Egypt, said a boat carrying at least 600 people capsized off Egypt’s coast on Wednesday killing at least 29 of them.
Beheira Governorate is a coastal governorate in Egypt and located in the northern part of the country in the Nile Delta. Its capital is Damanhur.
He described it as the latest disaster to befall migrants attempting to make the crossing to Europe.
He said the boat sank in the Mediterranean Sea off Burg Rashid, a village in the northern Beheira province.
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The official said the 29 bodies found so far, 18 were men, 10 women and a child.
“Initial information indicates that the boat sank because it was carrying more people than its limit,” he said.
“The boat tilted and the migrants fell into the water.”
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Rescue workers said so far, they had saved 150 people from the boat carrying Egyptian, Syrian, and African migrants.
Some 320 migrants and refugees drowned off the Greek island of Crete in June.
Migrants who survived told authorities their boat set sail from Egypt.
Some 206,400 migrants and refugees have crossed the Mediterranean this year, according to the International Organization for Migration.
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More than 2,800 deaths were recorded between January and June as against 1,838 recorded in the same period in 2015.
World leaders, including Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, gathered in New York this week at the United Nations General Assembly to discuss the migrant crisis.
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