20091204



REUTERS - Two Nile river passenger ferries collided on Friday in northern Egypt, with up to 38 people feared missing when one boat broke in half and the other overturned, security and ambulance sources said.

They said at least a dozen people survived the accident near the northern city of Rachid, but there were contradictory reports over how many people may have gone missing.

Security sources put the number of missing people at between 14 and 38, while Egypt's official state news agency quoted the governor of Beheira province as saying that six to eight people were missing. Security sources had earlier put the number at 80.

Public river ferries in Egypt can sometimes be crowded, but authorities do not always record passenger numbers, making an accurate count of the missing difficult.

The two ferries were heading to Rashid city. One was a passenger ferry that broke apart during the accident while the other, carrying both passengers and cars, overturned causing no injuries or fatalities.

A series of road, rail and sea accidents in Egypt in recent years have triggered an outcry over the government's handling of transport safety.

In February 2006, a ferry in the Red Sea caught fire and sank en route to Egypt from Saudi Arabia, killing 1,034 of the 1,400 people on board, many of them poor Egyptians.

An Egyptian appeals court in March this year found the owner of the ferry guilty of manslaughter and sentenced him to seven years in jail, reversing an earlier court decision exonerating Mamdouh Ismail, a member of Egypt's upper house of parliament.

Transport Minister Mohamed Mansour resigned in October over a train crash south of Cairo which killed 18 people.