Survivors said a fire broke out, got out of control and there were explosions. The vessel apparently sank suddenly as no distress signal was received.

Transport minister Mohammed Lutfy Mansour told reporters that investigators were trying to determine whether the fire led to the sinking. Many survivors said the fire began about 90 minutes after departure, but the ship kept going. Their accounts varied on the fire's location, with some saying it was in a storeroom or the engine room.

"They decided to keep going.

It's negligence, " one survivor, Nabil Zikry, said.

Ahmed Elew, an Egyptian in his 20s, said he went to the ship's crew to report the fire and they told him to help with the water hoses to put it out. At one point there was an explosion, he said.

Several survivors shouted to journalists their anger over slow rescue efforts. "They left us in the water for 24 hours. A helicopter came above us and circled. We would signal and they ignored us, " one man shouted. "Our lives are the cheapest in the world, " another said.

Rescue efforts appeared to have been confused. Egyptian officials initially turned down a British offer to divert a warship to the scene and a US offer to send a P3-Orion maritime naval patrol aircraft to the area. The British craft, HMS Bulwark, headed from the southern Red Sea where it was operating, then turned around when the offer was rejected.

But then Egypt asked for both the Orion and the Bulwark to be sent . . . then finally decided to call off the Bulwark, deciding it was too far away to help. In the end, the Orion was sent, but the Bulwark was not, he said.

A spokesman for President Hosni Mubarak said an investigation was under way. "The swift sinking of the ferry and the lack of sufficient lifeboats suggests there was some violation, but we cannot say until the investigation is complete, " he said.