Shark attack rattles Egypt's Red Sea tourism industry

The tourism sector along Egypt’s Red Sea is continuing business as usual – but with caution – after it was left rattled last week when a shark attacked and killed a Russian tourist off the coast of Hurghada.

The victim was a Russian national in his 20s who had been living in Egypt as a permanent resident. 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.

The Red Sea is a popular tourist destination where sharks are common but rarely attack people who swim within authorised areas. Egypt's environment ministry had captured the shark which attacked the Russian national "to inspect it", saying it had displayed "abnormal behaviour... resulting in the incident".

Last July two women, an Austrian and a Romanian, were killed in a shark attack – also near Hurghada. In 2018, a Czech tourist was killed by a shark off a Red Sea beach and a similar attack killed a German tourist in 2015. And in 2010, a spate of five attacks in five days unusually close to the shore of Sharm el-Sheikh killed one German and injured four other tourists.

Produced by Reem Khabbazy