His daughter Rebecca Austin 18 said he was shaken up and distraught

His daughter, Rebecca Austin, 18, said he was “shaken up and distraught”. Raymond Austin, from Kent, was among several British employees of a concrete company, who disembarked before the boat set sail because of they thought it unsafe. Some of those on board managed to swim ashore or to other pleasure boats near by. They were fighting each other and screaming.”He raised the alarm on his mobile phone as the boat began to overturn.

“Things were going all right, people were dancing, people were having fun, but the boat was very crowded,” Khalil Mirza, a Bahraini survivor said “People were scared in the water. The boat was returning to the port of Al Muharraq, in the north-east of the island state after a two-hour trip from the Marina Club in Manama, Bahrain’s capital.Survivors said there had been no warning. A Foreign Office spokesman said: “We can confirm that 15 British people, three of whom had dual nationality, have lost their lives. But there a still a number of people, some of whom may be British, who are still missing so the final figure could rise.”Identification procedures were hampered because there was no passenger list and few people were carrying identity papers although it is believed a total of 25 Britons were on board.Most of the passengers were employees of a construction company, Murray & Roberts, based in South Africa, and a subcontractor, who were celebrating the completion of a four-year contract on the Bahrain World Trade Centre towers. Some reports said the captain, who survived, had been reluctant to take it out because of overcrowding, and some worried passengers had left the ship before the cruise started.A British embassy team was dispatched to the area and Robin Lamb, the ambassador, was returning from London, where he had been attending a conference. There has been no suggestion of terrorism.The boat, a modern version of the ancient dhows common to the Gulf region, was believed to have a normal capacity of about 120. As rescue operations began to be scaled down, investigators were establishing exactly how the dhow capsized half a mile off the coast of Bahrain on Thursday night.

Thirteen of the 150 passengers remained unaccounted for, although several Britons were among more than 60 people were rescued, some of whom were still being treated in hospital last night.
Overcrowding is the most likely cause of the boat turning over at the end of a dinner cruise for employees of a construction company. Bahraini authorities are investigating claims that the pleasure boat which sank off the Persian Gulf state, killing 57 people including at least 15 Britons, was dangerously overcrowded. John Mackenzie, the families’ solicitor, said he would write to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to demand a full investigation.The men who died were Cpl Paul Graham Long, 24, from Colchester; Sgt Simon Hamilton-Jewell, 41, from Chessington; Cpl Russell Aston, 30, from Swadlincote; Cpl Simon Miller, 21, from Washington; L/Cpl Benjamin John McGowan Hyde, 23, from Northallerton; and L/Cpl Thomas Richard Keys, 20, from Bala.Mike Aston, father of Russell Aston, said there had been flaws in the chain of command and those responsible should pay for it.. The deaths of six Royal Military Policemen killed by a mob at Majar al-Kabir in Iraq in 2003 were unlawful but could not have been prevented, an inquest decided. Nicholas Gardiner, the Oxfordshire coroner, criticised the authorities for sending the redcaps into a hostile area without enough ammunition or better communication systems. He recorded verdicts of unlawful killing on all six men but said it was unlikely they could have been saved, even with better radio equipment, as there was insufficient time for a rescue.
Relatives of the men vowed to push for criminal charges, including manslaughter, to be brought against senior officers. How is it that Arabs can live anywhere in Israel and Jews cannot live here?”.

Those who voted for unilateral withdrawal were less than quarter of the electorate.”Mrs Weiss said if Mr Olmert started his withdrawal plan “the resistance will be a hundred times more than what happened at Amona”, the settlement outpost dismantled amid clashes between police and settlers on 1 February.The retired local rabbi, Daniel Shiloh, said Mr Halevy had always been “very fair to any Arab person” and had tried to prevent attacks on their property and orchards. The majority support me in wanting to keep the Jewish communities here. With all my criticisms of [Ariel] Sharon and [the late Yitzhak] Rabin, they did handle political matters with the responsibility of statesmen. Olmert is immature.”Refusing to accept that a majority of Israeli voters in the election had opted for withdrawal from the settlements, including supporters of Labour, Meretz, and the Arab parties, she talked of the 29 seats out of 120 secured by Mr Olmert’s party Kadima and added: “The majority of Israelis, unlike myself, hate Arabs. She added: “It is an illusion to think that if we are on this side of the fence or the other side of it it will make any difference They want us to be in the sea The stance of the Arabs has not changed. I think the Israeli government, like any normal government, has to fight the enemy until it completely stops the killing.”Mrs Weiss acknowledged that one of the dead couple’s sons, a senior army officer, who unlike his late parents is not religious and lives in a kibbutz in Israel, had told her he did not want the death of his parents to be mixed up with politics. Two Palestinians were killed and 15 wounded in clashes at his funeral.Mrs Weiss, has long been a prominent right-wing champion of Jewish settlement in the West Bank-judged as unlawful by the International Court of Justice.