JEDDAH, 8 February 2006 — Saudi authorities have refused to allow passengers to board an Egyptian ferry deemed unsafe, days after another ferry sank killing hundreds of people, a senior official said yesterday.

“The ferry, Al-Salam 94, arrived in Duba around midnight on Monday. We made our checks and found it was in a bad state. It was old,” Capt. Mahmoud Al-Harbi, director general of the port, told Arab News.

Al-Harbi said the port authorities sent back the ferry to the Egyptian port of Suez without allowing it to take any passengers. He did not say how many passengers were affected or when they would travel.

The 35-year old Al-Salam Boccaccio 98 sank early Friday during a Red Sea voyage from Duba to the Egyptian port of Safaga. Over 900 people are feared to have died in the incident.

The Saudi Interior Ministry said yesterday that the search and rescue division of the air force and civil defense had recovered 145 bodies from the sea. The ministry said Saudi Embassy officials in Cairo had identified bodies of five Saudis.

The captain of another Red Sea ferry has admitted he steered clear of the doomed ship to avoid a “second catastrophe.” “I took the decision not to turn around to protect the lives of the 1,800 passengers on board the Saint Catherine” which was headed for Duba, Salah Jomaa told Egyptian government daily Al-Ahram.

The Al-Salam Boccaccio 98, which like the Saint Catherine belonged to the El-Salam Maritime Transport Company, sank after an onboard fire.

Jomaa said turning to aid the stricken vessel could have sunk his own vessel, “especially as the weather conditions were bad and the waves high.”

Al-Salam had radioed the Saint Catherine to ask whether the captain could turn back and mount a rescue effort for Al-Salam, which was carrying 1,400 people when it sank. “I replied in the negative and they informed me during the course of the conversation that company director Mamdouh Ismail was asking me to continue on my course to avoid a second catastrophe,” said Jomaa.

The captain said he alerted all other vessels in the area to come to the rescue of survivors.

Maritime authorities in Egypt have decided to suspend Jomaa, who said the decision was taken because of a row he had with a member of a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the tragedy.

The Safaga offices of the owners of the ferry were ransacked Monday as anger over the fate of missing loved ones boiled over into violence.

According to the company, 426 people have been pulled from the sea, leaving close to 1,000 dead or missing. But government spokesman Magdi Radi told reporters that the number of survivors so far stood at 388.

The distraught families of victims have started to leave Safaga. The passengers on the ferry were mainly Egyptians returning from pilgrimage or jobs in Saudi Arabia. Many were bringing months if not years worth of savings back to their families.

— Additional input from agencies