A BOAT carrying up to 450 migrants capsized in the Mediterranean off Egypt’s north coast yesterday, drowning 42 people and prompting a search operation that rescued 163 passengers, officials said.

The vessel overturned off the port city of Rosetta, police and health officials said.

Five survivors, handcuffed to beds in a Rosetta hospital room, told AFP up to 450 people were on board.

“The boat sunk. My three children died,” said Badr Abdel Hamid, 28, before breaking into tears.

“We were 450 people on board. We left at 2am. An hour and a half later, it capsized. Whoever knew how to swim, swam. We even abandoned the women and children,” said Ahmed Mohamed, 27.

A municipal official in the Mediterranean city told AFP the boat sank some 12km from the coast and the victims included one child, 10 women and 31 young men.

They were Egyptians, Eritreans, Sudanese and Syrians, said the official, Ali Abdel Sattar.

The tragedy comes months after the EU’s border agency Frontex warned that growing numbers of migrants bound for Europe were turning to Egypt as a departure point for the perilous sea journey.

Smugglers often overload the boats, some of them scarcely seaworthy, with passengers who have paid for the journey.

Egypt’s Prime Minister Sharif Ismail ordered police to arrest the smugglers responsible, a cabinet statement said.

The military said in a statement that 163 passengers had been rescued so far, adding that they had stopped another boat elsewhere on the Mediterranean coast carrying 294 migrants.

With the search operating ongoing for an unknown number of people, health ministry spokesman Khaled Megahed told AFP that hospitals were being prepared to receive more casualties.