CAIRO (Reuters) - Nineteen people have been rescued out of about 30 believed to be on an Egyptian ferry that collided with another ferry and broke apart, officials said on Saturday, a day after the accident.
The two craft hit each other near Rashid city in Beheira governorate in north Egypt.
Initial reports had suggested several dozen passengers and crew may have been missing as the exact number of people on board was unclear. Figures provided Saturday suggested about 11 were still missing.
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.
"It is expected that the total number of passengers on the boat that broke is 30," Beheira Governor Mohamed Sharawy told Reuters.
Six of the 19 rescued passengers were injured and were transferred to Rashid hospital in Beheira, the governor said.
"The 15 people on the other boat were all rescued," he added.
Another regional official gave similar figures.
Public river ferries in Egypt can sometimes be crowded and total numbers being carried are not always recorded, making an accurate count of the missing difficult.
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 Red Sea 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.
Former Transport Minister Mohamed Mansour resigned in October over a train crash south of Cairo which killed 18 people.
(Writing by Yasmine Saleh; Editing by Matthew Jones)
