Over 700 Germans Missing in Tsunami
January 10, 2005Advertisement
The number of Germans officially reported missing in the Indian Ocean tsunami has been revised to 719 people,
but the government said on Monday it believes the real number is higher. Sixty Germans have been confirmed dead so far, but since the early days of the disaster on December 26, the government had said it believed the number of missing to be around 1,000. A statement from the German government's crisis unit for the tsunami said: "The current number of missing people reported to police in Germany... is now 719 people. It must unfortunately be expected that the actual number of missing Germans is much higher." The majority of missing Germans were on holiday in Thailand at the southern beach resorts around Phuket when the giant earthquake-triggered waves crashed into the coast. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer visited Phuket on Sunday and said the priority was now to identify nearly 2,000 bodies there whose nationality cannot be determined because they are decomposing. (AFP)
but the government said on Monday it believes the real number is higher. Sixty Germans have been confirmed dead so far, but since the early days of the disaster on December 26, the government had said it believed the number of missing to be around 1,000. A statement from the German government's crisis unit for the tsunami said: "The current number of missing people reported to police in Germany... is now 719 people. It must unfortunately be expected that the actual number of missing Germans is much higher." The majority of missing Germans were on holiday in Thailand at the southern beach resorts around Phuket when the giant earthquake-triggered waves crashed into the coast. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer visited Phuket on Sunday and said the priority was now to identify nearly 2,000 bodies there whose nationality cannot be determined because they are decomposing. (AFP)