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Egypt launches inquiry into crippled cruise liner

CAIRO: Egyptian authorities have opened an inquiry into how a luxury cruise liner with 950 people on board came to be stranded off its Red Sea coast, a government daily reported Saturday. The head of the Egyptian environment agency Salah Hafez has decided to keep the Royal Viking Sun in Egypt "in order to evaluate the damage caused to the coral that was hit," according to the daily Al-Ahram. The 37,845-tonne liner was en route from European ports to Aqaba via the Suez Canal when it struck an object believed to be coral or rocks around 14 kilometres (eight miles) from the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh late Thursday. On Saturday the 57O tourists on bnard were resting in hotels in the Red Sea resort after the crippled cruiser belonging to the British Cunard line was towed to the port by two Jordanian tugs.

But the liner could not enter the port for "technical reasons" and the passengers had to be ferried ashore in small groups with their luggage from the Royal Viking Sun in an operation lasting more than eight hours, port director Captain Ibrahim al-Hennawi said.

The liner, carrying tourists of several nationalities, including Americans, Britons, and Germans, was on a round-the-world trip which started in January in Florida, United States.

A Cunard spokesman said the ship's propellers had been damaged and the ship had taken on some water.

Most of the passengers were accommodated for the night in the hotels of Sharm el-Sheikh, a diving resort which is in peak season, before being flown home on charter flights, Hennawi said.

The Red Sea is known for its wealth of marine life, and outstanding coral reefs, making it a divers paradise.

The incident is the latest to hit the troubled company Cunard, which lost 16.4 million pounds last year.

In November, Cunard agreed to pay a total of 7.5 million in the form of refunds and travel credits to passengers on the "cruise from hell" on the QE II in December 1994.

The Transatlantic cruise from Southampton in southern England to New York began before a refurbishment and plumbing had been completed, resulting in chaos on board.

And last month the MV Sagafjord, carrying 500 passengers, was stranded in the South China Sea after a fire broke out in the engine room.-APP