New Delhi, May 21, (dpa/GNA) – The Indian Navy continued search operations Friday for 24 people who were still missing five days after a barge sank near Mumbai during a powerful storm, but hopes of finding more survivors were dim.
The barge, owned by state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), was carrying 261 people when it sank near an offshore oilfield on Monday evening as Cyclone Tauktae swirled across the Arabian Sea and headed for a landfall on the Gujarat coast north of Mumbai.
The Indian Navy said so far 51 bodies had been recovered and 188 people rescued including two from a tug which also sank near the off-shore site.
All survivors and the bodies had been brought to Mumbai, an Indian Navy spokesman said.
Search and rescue operations with ships and aircraft was continuing for the remaining crew.
Tauktae, the strongest cyclone to strike the region in over two decades, packed winds reaching 200 kilometres per hour when it made landfall.
The death toll in other storm-related incidents – mostly house and tree collapses on the Indian coasts – rose to 107 on Friday as reports of damages and casualties kept trickling in.
Seventy-nine were killed in Gujarat and 18 in Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital, state disaster management officials said. Another 10 were killed in Goa, Karnataka and Kerala states.
“I have asked the administration to restore electricity, water supply and repair roads by Sunday. If needed, we will bring in more manpower to speed up the restoration work,” Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani said at a press briefing.
GNA