At least 13 fishermen were killed and as many rescued on Sunday after an Egyptian fishing boat collided with a large Kuwaiti container ship in the Gulf of Suez.

The accident occurred early morning near Raes Gharib in the Gulf of Suez, some 360 kilometres south of Cairo, ahram online reported.

The ship was coming from Italy port and was on its way to Jada’ah port in Saudi Arabia when it collided with the fishing boat carrying 40 Egyptian fishermen aboard.

“Our boat capsized in minutes and some of us swam to the surface and survived,” one of the rescued fishermen was quoted as saying. The bodies of 13 fishermen had been pulled from the water, the report said.

Rescue and search teams aided by a military helicopter rushed to the shores of Al-Tur town, the capital of southern Sinai, to aid the fishermen and are looking for the 14 missing persons.