EGYPT: Death in the Nile

As sweltering Cairo faded into the distance, a troupe of clowns on the old river boat began cavorting on the top deck before the packed crowds of Egyptians escaping the city. Below decks in the 200-ton Dandara were hundreds more on holiday—government agricultural experts and their families, who had chartered the boat for the day, bound for the picnic grounds at the Nile Delta Barrage.

Suddenly the overcrowded boat sprang a hull leak, and a torrent of water gushed through. The Dandara came to a halt in midriver. Crewmen managed to transfer 50 passengers to a nearby barge, then desperately steered for shore. But near the bank, the panicking crowd rushed to the shoreside rails. Under the sudden weight, the Dandara slowly tipped onto its side.

Safety was a mere six yards away, and scores made it, swimming. But others were trapped inside the boat or in the river, and were drowned. Rushing to the scene, President Gamal Abdel Nasser joined the wailing crowd on shore, as frogmen labored to extricate trapped bodies.

After two days, 70 victims had been pulled from the water, and more than 100 were still missing. Police arrested the Dandara's skipper, and charged him with negligence in taking aboard 300 passengers on a boat whose rated safe capacity was 60.