Swimmer dies in shark attack off Egypt’s Red Sea coast

CAIRO: A Russian man was killed on Thursday when a shark attacked him off the coast of Egypt’s Red Sea resort city of Hurghada, authorities said.

“An attack by a tiger shark on a beachgoer... led to his death,” Egypt’s environment ministry posted on Facebook, without providing further details.

Russian media said the victim was a Russian national in his 20s, and video circulated on social media appearing to show the incident.

Russian Consul-General Viktor Voropayev told state-owned TASS news agency that the Egyptian authorities had confirmed to him the death of the Russian national who was born in 1999.

“The victim was not a tourist, but a permanent resident of Egypt,” Voropayev told the news agency.

Video footage said to be of the incident was widely circulated on social media in Egypt, showing a person struggling to escape from the shark.

Water activities suspended

Egypt’s environment ministry said a team had captured the shark “to inspect it”, saying it had displayed “abnormal behaviour... resulting in the incident”.

It said water activities would be suspended for two days starting on Friday, pointing to previous attacks on people by the same type of shark.

The Red Sea is a popular tourist destination, where sharks are common but rarely attack people who swim within authorised areas.

Last July, two women, an Austrian and a Romanian, were killed in a shark attack near Hurghada.

In 2018, a Czech tourist was killed by a shark off a Red Sea beach after a similar attack killed a German tourist in 2015.

In 2010, a spate of five attacks in five days unusually close to the shore of tourist hotspot Sharm Al Sheikh killed one German and injured four other foreign tourists.