Tsunami missing cut to 6
Just over a month after the catastrophic Boxing Day tsunami in southern Asia, one of the seven Greek nationals officially listed as missing has been found alive and well, the Foreign Ministry said yesterday. Merchant seaman Constantinos Priotakis, who had been among the seven people named on a Foreign Ministry list of Greeks missing, feared dead, on New Year’s Day, «has assured his family that he is in good health,» a ministry statement said, without elaborating. The statement said the information on Priotakis had been received by the ministry team handling the missing list, «and was confirmed by his family.» The tsunami, caused by a 9.0-Richter undersea earthquake off Sumatra, killed between 157,000 and 220,000 people in 11 countries. Despite initial fears of over a thousand Greek holidaymakers being unaccounted-for in tsunami-afflicted areas, Athens first said nine were missing, and then seven – whose names were released. Five of those were permanent residents abroad, and another was a Finnish national married to a Greek citizen.
