Ferry Victims' Relatives Riot

Hundreds of relatives of passengers on a ferry that sank in the Red Sea attacked the offices of the ship's owners Monday, throwing furniture into the street and tearing down the company's sign. Riot police fired tear gas to restore order.

Family members also tried to storm a hospital in another port town after it displayed photographs of bodies retrieved from the sea. They told authorities they wanted inside to identify the bodies in the hospital morgue.

The relatives are desperate to know whether their loved ones were among the more than 1,000 who drowned and they say El Salam Maritime still has not released the victims' names. They also accuse Egypt's government of mishandling the rescue.

The Al-Salaam Boccaccio 98 sank in the Red Sea early Friday on its way from Saudi Arabia to the Egyptian port of Safaga.

They've got a right to say that Egypt botched the handling of the rescue, but it doesn't excuse the actions of the captain and crew as suggested by eyewitnesses who claim that the fire started with the ship only 20 miles from the Saudi port but continued on for two hours as the crew futilely tried to douse the flames, and problems with the pumps meant that the ship kept taking on water and became unstable - sinking with little warning.

Instead of turning around, the ship continued on towards Egypt. There are questions why the ship didn't alert authorities about the seriousness of the situation. There are also questions why the Egyptians didn't want or accept assistance from other countries, including Britain and Israel.

And there are serious questions over the speed and urgency of the Egyptian response.

"There was no rescue effort," Mr. Qenawy, a 44-year-old driver who boarded the Al Salam Boccaccio 98 on Thursday from Doba to return home after working a stint in Kuwait. "The Egyptians did not help us. It was an Indian ship that helped us. They gave us milk, a change of clothes, and gave us blankets to keep warm." When the Egyptian rescuers finally did come out to sea, according to Mr. Qenawy and a fellow survivor, they did not even offer the victims aspirin.

Mr. Qenawy's story is typical of many of the survivors of what will likely go down as the worst maritime accident in modern Egyptian history. Three days after the crash, the government estimates that perhaps 400 of the 1,400 passengers survived. A 19-year-old student returning from his studies in Jeddah, Ahmad Mohmad Hafez, said he had to wait 34 hours hanging onto the side of a capsized lifeboat with 14 other people before an Egyptian naval vessel found him and his companions.

This is a major crisis for the Murbarak government. And they're not dealing with it well at all.

Prior coverage: Egyptian Ferry Disaster Update, Part II, Egyptian Ferry Disaster Update, Mysteries at Sea.