On the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea in recent days there have been two shark attacks on tourists.

Both incidents ended in death.

Against this background, the Egyptian authorities urgently imposed restrictions on swimming for vacationers and launched an investigation into the causes of the incident.

Both attacks took place on 1 July.

First, it became known about the predator attack on 68-year-old Austrian citizen Elizaber Squier on Sahl Hasheesh beach south of Hurghada.

The incident happened in front of dozens of shocked eyewitnesses.

The woman was not a tourist, but permanently resided in Egypt being married to an Egyptian.

The shark bit off her leg and arm, the victim died on the way to the hospital from pain shock.

On Sunday, July 3, from the official report of the Ministry of the Environment of Egypt, it became known about the death of another vacationer, a Romanian citizen.

The department did not provide details of her death.

According to media reports, the victim of the attack was a 44-year-old woman.

Her tormented body was found on corals 300 meters from the site of the attack on an Austrian citizen.

Therefore, it is possible that it could have happened even earlier than the first incident.

"Please remain vigilant"

On Sunday, local authorities imposed a temporary ban on swimming in a number of places on the resort coast, enclosing the coast with a special tape.

In addition, an investigation has been launched into the circumstances of the appearance of a dangerous predator in the immediate vicinity of the coast. 

“Immediately after receiving information about the shark attack on two women swimming in the area of ​​the Sahl Hasheesh resort in Hurghada, the Minister of the Environment, Yasmine Fuad, ordered the formation of a working group of specialists from the Red Sea reserves.

The ministry extends its condolences to the families of the two victims,” the ministry said in a statement.

The governor of the Red Sea province, centered on Hurghada, has ordered a ban on all water activity in the attack area.

In turn, the Russian Consulate General on July 3 issued a special appeal to compatriots vacationing on the Red Sea coast.

“On July 1, in the Sahl Hasheesh region, there were two cases of shark attacks on people that ended in deaths, and on July 3, a shark was seen at one of the beaches within the boundaries of Hurghada.

In this regard, we ask Russian citizens to remain vigilant when in the water, to strictly follow the bans imposed by the Egyptian authorities on swimming, diving and fishing on the high seas and off the coast, and to strictly observe the signals coming from hotel employees and the coast guard to go to land, ”the message reads. in the message of the diplomatic mission in Telegram.

According to TASS, the second shark was spotted on Sunday at the Rixos Premium Magawish hotel in Hurghada.

"Such measures are necessary"

“Everyone, of course, is shocked by this situation.

People are just scared.

Everyone understands that, as they say, an unloaded gun can fire once, ”Russian Nelli Anishchenko, who has lived in Egypt for many years, told RT on Monday.

“Today we have a very strong heat wave and I was not outside, so it’s hard to say whether people comply with the restrictions on swimming.

But basically everyone understands that such measures are necessary, and that these bans did not appear out of nowhere.

According to my feelings, there are not so many Russian tourists, there is no influx of ours, and most of the tourists are Europeans.”

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The situation is also being actively discussed in specialized network chats and groups dedicated to holidays on the Egyptian coast.

Despite the fact that some tourists, especially those who are going to Egypt in the near future, are anxious, most comments boil down to the fact that if you follow simple rules of behavior in the water, then there is no danger.

A lot of time is devoted to discussing the causes of the current situation.

In particular, many consider the version circulated in the media by one of the employees of a local hotel that sharks could have been attracted by the carcasses of 16 thousand sheep that were on board the sunken barge plausible.

She was shipwrecked on June 12 off the coast of Sudan.

Attacks on the Russians

Shark attacks on tourists in Egypt are recorded almost every year, but as a rule they are isolated.

The last incident was recorded two years ago in the Ras Mohammed reserve in Sinai.

Then no one died, the predator attacked three people.

At the end of 2010, a whole series of attacks took place in Sharm el-Sheikh, when three Russian citizens were seriously injured, among others, over the course of several days.

70-year-old Muscovite Lyudmila Stolyarova lost her left leg below the knee.

“I never break the rules, so I swam exclusively between buoys and coral reefs.

There were few people around, I began to scream, but the boat did not arrive immediately, ”the pensioner told RIA Novosti then.

Olga Martsinko, a resident of the Moscow region, was resting in another hotel with her daughter.

As a result of the shark attack, she lost her left arm above the elbow and received numerous lacerations. 

“I was wearing fins and a mask, my daughter was swimming next to me, when suddenly my hand rested against something rough,” she said.

“At first I thought it was a dolphin, but then this dolphin grabbed my hand with its teeth, began to wag in all directions and pulled it down to the depths,” she told the Russian media.

The third victim, a resident of St. Petersburg, naval officer Yevgeny Trishkin, also lost part of his arm after being bitten by a shark.

As the man admitted, he did not know anything about previous cases of attacks by a marine predator on other tourists in the same area.

“I snorkeled and took pictures.

Suddenly, right in front of me, I saw the face of a shark that emerged from the depths at me.

She shook me hard, and when I had already begun to lose consciousness, a boat approached, and they pulled me out of the water.

If I swam beyond the buoys, it is unlikely that they would have saved me already, ”TASS quoted him as saying. 

In those days, a citizen of Ukraine was also attacked by sharks in Sharm el-Sheikh.

Another woman, a German national, was fatally injured in a shark attack.

The reason for the invasion of predators was the discharge from a refrigerated ship after an emergency defrosting of a large batch of spoiled meat, which attracted sharks.