Phosphate carrier fished out of Nile water in Qena

A phosphate-carrying barge that capsized in the Nile water in Qena a week ago has been lifted.

Environment Minister Khaled Fahmy announced the good news Wednesday, noting that a giant crane had been dispatched from Cairo to do the job.

He also assured people that the whole phosphate shipment, weighing 500 tons, has also been removed using pumps, pipes and hoses.

It has been re-loaded on another barge, Fahmy told MENA.

The minister once again assured people that the barge accident had noting to do with poisoned cases reported in the Delta city of Sharqiya. The spill cannot possibly extend that fast from the Upper Egyptian city of Qena all the way up to the Delta city of Sharqiya, he stressed.

"How come that pollution reaches Sharqiya so quickly when there is not one case reported in the governorate where the barge sank," Fahmy wondered.

"Why Sharqiya in particular, when it should have crossed a number of governorates before reaching there?"

Fahmy said his ministry is concerned with the file of the Nile River and the lakes.

The Health Ministry and the governorate of Sharqiya are the go-to authorities for answers about drinking water, he added.

The public prosecutor had ordered an investigation into the case, Fahmy said, stressing that his Ministry is not hiding any information and does not fear interrogation.

Chairman of the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA) Ahmed Abul Soud said the barge had collided with the Dandara el Elwi bridge before it sank in the Nile water.

Abul Soud, who also chaired the committee formed by the environment minister to follow up the lifting of the barge, said that crude phosphate is hardly water-soluble.

Samples of water have been extracted from different parts and examined over the past days to make sure it is potable, Abul Soud said.

No pollution was detected in the examined samples, he added.

Abul Soud said that the phosphate was stored in tanks of the barge.

The Environment Ministry has coordinated with the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC) and the anti-pollution center in Aswan to handle any oil leak that might occur as a result of the barge sinking, he said.

But Abul Soud still assured citizens that phosphate had not leaked into the water.