A British tourist and several Egyptians were killed during unusually heavy rain storms in Egypt yesterday that destroyed homes and disrupted road traffic.
The man, named by local media as Luke Day, was on a cruise with his wife and two other tourists, from India and Canada, when their boat overturned in the Nile amid heavy wind and rain at Aswan in southern Egypt.
The other three tourists in the boat survived, Egyptian police said. However, two Egyptian women were killed when the vessel sank at the popular tourist destination.
A spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: “We can confirm the death of a British national in Aswan. We are in contact with the family and providing consular assistance.”
At least six more were killed as the torrential rain sparked flash floods in Egypt and Israel, officials said.
Advertisement
Power lines were damaged in the south of the country and in the Sinai peninsula, but Mohamed Farag, a senior regional official for the power company in Aswan, told the state news agency MENA that the Aswan High Dam hydroelectric facility was unaffected.
Around 300 clay-built homes were destroyed in villages around Aswan, killing two Egyptians and seriously injuring two more, according to Mostafa el-Sayed, the Governor of Aswan.
To the east, two Egyptians also died and others were injured when their homes were destroyed by the rain across Sinai, security sources and witnesses said.
“A woman died and 13 were injured after huge floods surged into South Sinai,” the governor of South Sinai, Abdel el-Fadeel Shousha, said. A security source said a man died in North Sinai.