Last Updated: June 09, 2023, 14:52 IST
Video footage showed the person struggling to escape from the shark. (Credits: Twitter)
The 52-second video, widely circulated on social media, shows huge splashes and commotion in the water while people kept shouting in the background
A Russian man was killed by a tiger shark while he was swimming at the coast of Egypt’s Hurghada on Thursday.
A video has surfaced on the internet that shows the Russian swimmer in the sea struggling to escape from the shark while he is dragged under the water by the predatory fish.
The 52-second video, widely circulated on social media, shows huge splashes and commotion in the water while people kept shouting in the background.
“It’s eating his remains now,” an eyewitness who filmed the incident can be heard saying.
The Egypt’s environment ministry confirmed the incident and said “an attack by a tiger shark on a beachgoer… led to his death.”
Russian media said the victim was a Russian national in his 20s and video circulated on social media appearing to show the incident. His name was revealed to be Vladimir Popov.
Russian Consul-General Viktor Voropayev told state-owned TASS news agency that the Egyptian authorities had confirmed to him the death of the Russian national who was born in 1999.
“The victim was not a tourist, but a permanent resident of Egypt,” Voropayev told the news agency.
Another eyewitness said he tried to help the Russian national but the incident unfolded in seconds.
“It happened in a second. Rescuers reacted very quickly. For some reason, I immediately felt that it was a shark. I immediately jumped up and started shouting: ‘Sharks, sharks! Save yourself!’ Nobody understood yet,” a witness reportedly told Russia station REN-TV.
Egypt’s environment ministry said a team had captured the shark “to inspect it”, saying it had displayed “abnormal behaviour… resulting in the incident”. The shark was transferred to a laboratory “for examination and all required information to determine the possible causes of the attack.”
It said water activities would be suspended for two days starting on Friday, pointing to previous attacks on people by the same type of shark.
The Red Sea is a popular tourist destination, where sharks are common but rarely attack people who swim within authorised areas.
Last July, two women, an Austrian and a Romanian, were killed in a shark attack near Hurghada.
In 2018, a Czech tourist was killed by a shark off a Red Sea beach after a similar attack killed a German tourist in 2015.
In 2010, a spate of five attacks in five days unusually close to the shore of tourist hotspot Sharm el-Sheikh killed one German and injured four other foreign tourists.
