Bodies of Indian cyclone victims have not washed ashore in Oman: Embassy

Energy Saturday 16/December/2017 22:00 PM
By: Times News Service
Bodies of Indian cyclone victims have not washed ashore in Oman: Embassy

Muscat: The bodies of Indian fishermen, who went missing following Cyclone Ockhi, have not washed up on Oman’s coast, the Indian embassy in Muscat has clarified.
There were rumours doing the rounds that the bodies of Indian fishermen have washed up on the Omani coast after Cyclone Ockhi wreaked havoc on the western coast of India.
“Embassy is in touch with Omani authorities. There are no reports of bodies of Indian fishermen that have washed up on Omani coast,” the tweet read, adding that there have been no sightings of bodies floating in
Omani waters.
More than 600 fishermen from Tamil Nadu and Kerala are still missing after Cyclone Ockhi ravaged parts of south and western India a fortnight ago, a home ministry official said on Friday. As many as 433 fishermen from Tamil Nadu and 186 from Kerala are yet to be traced.
However, the official said the two state governments were yet to give a final figure of the people missing since the cyclone made a landfall on December 2.
A house-to-house verification process was going on and a final figure of the missing fishermen will be known once the process was over, the official added.
Several fishermen had ventured into the sea in boats and “small crafts” before Ockhi approached the coastal region, authorities say. -With agency inputs.