According to Egyptian and Russian officials, swimming near a beach at an Egyptian Red Sea vacation has been banned after a shark killed a Russian citizen on Thursday.
The event happened in Hurghada, a famous tourist place on Egypt’s eastern coast.
Viktor Voropayev, the Russian Consul-General, told Russia’s state-run TASS news that a Russian citizen born in 1999 “died as a result of a shark attack.”
“This has been confirmed by Egypt’s proper authorities,” Voropayev said, as quoted by TASS.
Egypt’s Environment Ministry said in a statement that Minister of Environment Yasmine Fouad told a committee to look into the event.
She also told local officials to put in place the “highest levels of safety for those who go to the beaches of the Red Sea and to take all possible steps to prevent a repeat of the shark attack,” the statement said.
According to the statement, a specialized team was able to catch the “Tiger shark” that caused the accident “to examine it to find out the possible reasons for its attack and to find out if it is the same fish that caused accidents in the past.”
The Environment Ministry put a two-day ban on swimming, fishing, and all other water sports in the area between Gouna, which is north of Hurghada, and Soma Bay, which is south of Hurghada.
Over the past few years, several similar things have happened in the Egyptian Red Sea.
According to the Egyptian Ministry of Environment, two women were killed by shark strikes in the Red Sea south of the city of Hurghada in the year 2022.
In 2020, a shark bit a boy from Ukraine and took off his arm, and an Egyptian tour guide lost a leg. In 2018, a shark killed a Czech tourist on a beach near the Red Sea, according to the state-run Al-Ahram Online newspaper.
