Hoping to escape a dire economy and bleak prospects, Egyptians are increasingly attempting the perilous sea crossing to Europe that this month claimed dozens of lives in a shipwreck off Greece.
“I spoke to my son for the last time on the evening of June 7. He told me they were taking off” two days later, said the father of a 14-year-old who had disappeared in the Mediterranean.
The crowded fishing boat his son boarded along with hundreds of other migrants set sail from Libya. It capsized in the Ionian Sea near Greece’s Peloponnese peninsula on the night of June 13 before reaching European shores.
At least 82 people died in what has been called one of the deadliest migrant drownings in recent years.
“Young men regularly leave our village without telling their families,” the father told AFP, requesting anonymity to protect his privacy.
“That’s what happened to us,” he said. “I found out that my son had left for Libya” where he spent 15 days before taking off to sea.
More than 100 survivors have been pulled from the water, but the United Nations said that between 400 and 750 passengers were crammed on the boat — their remains of many of them likely still at sea.
Authorities say 43 Egyptians survived. A local NGO, Refugees Platform in Egypt (RPE), said it has received dozens of calls from families desperate for news of their relatives.
From the father’s Nile Delta village of Naamna alone, RPE has identified 13 missing persons, including nine minors.
And in two villages in the Sharqia governorate, the NGO’s executive director, Nour Khalil, said more than 40 families had asked for help.
“We don’t have specific numbers of Egyptians that were on the boat, and authorities have not disclosed the number of Egyptians that disappeared,” Khalil told AFP.
