At least six people have died and nine have been injured after a tourist submarine sank in Hurghada, Egypt. Four of the injured have been taken to hospital and are said to be in a critical condition.
Initial reports suggested that all of the passengers on board were Russian, however, Red Sea Governor General Amr Hanafy has since issued a statement saying there was a mixture of nationalities on board, including tourists from India, Norway and Sweden.
General Hanafy said that the six people killed in the disaster are confirmed to be Russian; the Russian consul general to Egypt, Viktor Vorpaev, told the Russian news agency Tass that two of the deceased were children.
The submarine has been identified under the name ‘Sindbad’, a Hurghada-based tour operator with two 44-passenger recreational submarines.
Footage circulating on social media after the disaster shows that the submarine began to dive while people were still boarding, leading to water flooding through the open hatches.
Egyptian media reports that the submarine sank at around 10 am local time on Thursday morning (27 March) ‘in front of the marina of a famous Hurghada hotel’. Although there is no information as to the precise location, Sindbad is registered at Serry Beach Resort, close to Hurghada International Airport in the southern part of the city.
Various theories as to why the submarine sank are also circulating, although none have as yet been confirmed. Some have blamed the crew who mistakenly began the tour while two children took a last-minute toilet break, while authorities have hinted at a technical failure.
The crew are currently being interviewed by local police.
According to SindBad’s website, the submarines were manufactured in Finland and are rated to a maximum depth of 25m, carrying tourists on sightseeing trips around the local reefs. Sindbad has been operating the submarines for at least the last two years.
The sinking is the third maritime tourism disaster to strike Egypt in 2025, after the destruction of the popular liveaboard Emperor Seven Seas, which caught fire in Port Ghalib earlier in March, and the sinking of a newly built liveaboard on its way to Hurghada from the boatyard Port Rashid in February.
The tragedy also follows almost four months to the day after the Sea Story tragedy, in which 11 people died when the Dive Pro Liveaboard-owned vessel capsized on its way to Sha’ab Sataya in the southern Red Sea in November 2024.
There have been so many incidents involving Egyptian tourist vessels over the last two years that the UK government’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) issued a bulletin warning travellers to be wary of safety issues on board Egyptian boats.
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