Tourist, feared drowned, is found safe and well

A 34-year-old Belarussian tourist, who had gone missing on Monday morning after going swimming in Pomos, Paphos, was found by a 27-year-old man in the afternoon, a police report said.

According to the report, the tourist was found walking along the Pachyammos-Pomos road.

He told police that he had started drifting in currents while swimming and could not make it back to shore, but was eventually able to swim to a remote beach.

Exhausted, he slept there and woke up in the afternoon, at which point he started walking along the nearby road.

His health condition, police said, was good and he declined a visit to the emergency room.

Authorities had been searching for the missing tourist throughout the day.

In a statement early in the afternoon, the defence ministry said that the Larnaca joint rescue coordination centre had been notified of a missing person in the Pomos area.

The centre dispatched a vessel and a team of divers, as well as a nurse aboard a helicopter and a police patrol unit to search for the missing man.

He had been reported missing at 11am by the former Pomos local council leader, who had spotted his personal belongings on the beach four hours earlier.

Local police identified the items as belonging to the 34-year-old Belarussian tourist who is staying in a Peyia lodging and had been spotted at a different beach on Sunday.

The man, who has holidayed in Cyprus many times, arrived in Cyprus in early June and will depart in September.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.