A Russian man died while swimming a few feet away from the crowded beach of a popular Egyptian resort in Hurghada on Thursday.
Footage circulating of the attack showed 23-year-old man named Vladimir Popov being repeatedly attacked and dragged under water by a tiger shark, according to Sky News.
Who was the man attacked by a shark in Egypt?
The Daily Beast reported that the incident happened at the Dream Beach hotel and that Viktor Voropayev, the Russian consul-general in Hurghada, confirmed the man in the attack to be a Russian citizen.
“A Russian died as a result of the shark attack,” Voropayev said confirming that Popov had been living in Egypt for several months prior to the attack.
The father of the man who died in the attack said according to The Independent, “We went to the beach to relax.”
He continued saying, “My son was attacked by a shark, it all happened in 20 seconds, he was just dragged under the water.”
Are there tiger sharks in the Red Sea?
Newsweek reported that the shark responsible for the attack was a tiger shark who is now captured and taken for an examination to determine the reason for the incident.
A statement from The Egyptian Ministry of the Environment detailed, “In this regard, the specialized team of the Ministry of the Environment and in cooperation with other specialties have succeeded in controlling the fish that caused the accident and has been transferred to the laboratory for examination and all required information to determine the possible causes of the attack.”
The ministry reportedly determined that, “an assessment of the shark found that it was the same one to have caused ‘previous accidents.’”
Sky News reported that shark attacks in the “coastal areas of the Red Sea” are typically rare despite two fatal attacks last year in the same area of Hurghada that killed two tourists, one Austrian and one Romanian.