Hopes faded today of finding 800 people missing from an Egyptian ferry which caught fire and sank in the Red Sea in the early hours yesterday morning.
Survivors told of crew keeping lifejackets from passengers and of taking to lifeboats and abandoning passengers to their fate.
Despite fire below deck, the listing ship had continued sailing out to sea for hours before disaster struck, they said.
Rescuers have pulled 389 survivors and at least 195 bodies from the waters or from dinghies and boats near where the Al Salam 98 went down, state news agency MENA and officials said.
Survivors said that fire broke out soon after the ferry began its voyage and the ship began to list, but that the crew played down the problem.
"There was a fire but the crew stopped the people from putting on lifejackets so that it wouldn't cause a panic," said Abdel Raouf Abdel Nabi, a survivor who arrived in the Egyptian port of Safaga today.
"There was a blaze down below. The crew said 'Don't worry, we will put it out.' When things got really bad the crew just went off in the lifeboats and left us on board," said Nader Galal Abdel Shafi, another arrival on the same rescue boat.
Other survivors in the nearby port of Hurghada described thick smoke in the lower decks of the ferry.
Rifat Said (34) a passenger from Giza near Cairo, said:. "We asked why there was smoke and they told us they were putting out the fire but it got worse."
"The ferry sailed on for two hours listing to the side. Then it just went onto its side and within five minutes it had sunk," Said told reporters. Ashraf Saeed Mohammed said he clung to a lifebuoy for 16 hours.
"Praise God ... I had thought it was the end," he said.
The 35-year-old ferry had been carrying 1,272 passengers and about 100 crew from Duba in Saudi Arabia to Safaga in Egypt.
An official from the company that owned the ferry said coastal stations had not received a distress call.
Egypt's MENA news agency said another ship picked up a message from the ferry's captain saying his ship was in danger of sinking.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who has ordered an immediate investigation into the disaster, visited some of the injured in a hospital in Hurghada today.
Mr Mubarak ordered the government to pay 30,000 Egyptian pounds (€4,100) in compensation to the families of the dead and 15,000 pounds to each of the survivors, MENA said.
In Safaga, hundreds of weeping and angry relatives of passengers gathered in front of the gates of the port where the ferry should have arrived at 2am (local time) on Friday.
In the morning an official came and read out a partial list of the names of survivors to the assembled relatives.
Other relatives broke down in tears when the reading ended and they had not heard the names they were waiting for.
General Mahfouz Taha, head of the Red Sea Ports Authority, said rescue efforts would continue. Officials and experts initially said poor weather was likely to be behind the sinking of the 11,800-ton vessel.
Transport Minister Mohamed Lutfi Mansour told Egyptian television today that a fire seemed to have broken out in the ferry's engine room. Egyptian presidential spokesman Suleiman Awad said on Friday there may not have been enough lifeboats.