A has shark killed a Czech man near a tourist resort off the coast of Egypt.
The 42-year-old man was swimming in the waters off the beach at Marsa Alam on August 3 when the shark attacked and killed him, Michaela Lagronova, a Czech foreign ministry spokesperson told Newsweek.
Parts of his remains washed up on the shore, The Telegraph reported citing local sources. The Egyptian foreign ministries did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The unnamed victim had been on vacation with his family at the resort off Egypt's Red Sea, a popular tourist spot in the region, Lagronova told Newsweek. The family have since returned home to the Czech Republic. His remains will likely be returned to his home country this week, she said.
The species of shark has not been confirmed.
The attack is the first in the country since 2015, when a shark killed a German tourist off the coast of the Egyptian Red Sea resort of al-Quseir. That followed a spate of attacks in 2010 at Sharm El Sheikh, where one person was believed to have been killed by an oceanic whitetip shark, BBC News reported. Officials were forced to close the popular resort for a week. Such incidents, however, are considered relatively rare.
Read more: Man describes shark attack that caused Florida beach to close: 'Blood started pouring out'
Tourism is a vital part of the Egyptian economy, and reports indicate officials tried to downplay the attack in order to protect the industry, which has suffered since the 2011 uprising against Hosni Mubarak. It appears to be slowly recovering, as the number of tourists spiked by 37 percent to over 2.4 million last year, an anonymous official told Reuters. However, in 2010, as many 14.7 million people visited the country.
According to The Telegraph, Egypt's Al Mal newspaper reported that the country's ministry of the environment, which would oversee an investigation into an attack, shared and then deleted a Facebook post detailing the killing. The Times also reported that Egyptian news outlets deleted stories about the incident, causing suspicion that they bowed to pressure to censor the story.
This article has been updated with comment from Michaela Lagronová.
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