A TOURIST drowned off the coast of Paphos yesterday making it the third drowning in as many days.
The 64-year-old Lebanese man, in Cyprus with his wife for a holiday, drowned around midday yesterday in the sea near the Tombs of the Kings area in Paphos. Earlier in the day, divers found the body of a man missing since Friday night in a lake in Archangelos while in Limassol, mourners attended the funeral of former MP Yiannakis Agapiou who drowned at sea on Thursday.
The 64-year-old Abdel Malek Basbous went swimming with his wife, Elham Salloum, 52, in the sea near the Venus Beach Hotel yesterday. According to the Paphos CID head, Klitos Erotocritou, police were informed at around 12.30 that someone had drowned at that beach.
Shortly after entering the water, at around 50 metres from the coast, the husband and wife encountered strong currents. A Paphos police official told the Cyprus Mail that Basbous tried to help his wife reach shore. The Lebanese couple called for help from other bathers in the area who responded to the call, helping Salloum out of the water alive. However, they were unable to save Basbous who was pulled out of the water dead. His body was taken to Paphos General Hospital where the on duty doctors confirmed his death.
The police official said the beach had been red-flagged due to the dangerous currents that are prevalent across the entire coastline in that area. He noted that this did not stop locals and tourists alike from continuing to swim there.
Erotocritou called on the authorities to take stricter measures against swimming in the area, noting that drownings occurred every year in the same spot. According to Cyprus News Agency, in the last three years alone seven people have drowned at that beach.
Earlier in the day, divers located the mud-covered body of a 38-year-old Romanian man living in Cyprus who had gone missing the night before at the Manglis lake in the Archangelos area.
The man had gone fishing with a fellow countryman at around 8pm on Friday night when he decided to go for a swim in the lake. After disappearing, his friend called police who launched a search party for him with divers and boats. The search was called off when no trace of him could be found and restarted yesterday morning at first light.
Divers from EMAK, the Fire Service’s special unit dealing with catastrophes, eventually found his body near the bottom of the lake at around 9.45am.
“The body was covered in mud at the bottom of the lake. The divers had to feel their way around. During the search, they found his foot in the mud and he was taken out. He was covered in mud about four metres deep,” said EMAK head Andreas Loizides.
Police were unable to confirm yesterday whether the 38-year-old had any family in Cyprus.
Meanwhile, the funeral of former AKEL MP and head of the police watchdog commission, Yiannakis Agapiou, was held in Limassol yesterday.
Agapiou, 78, was found dead in the Limassol coastal area on Thursday. State pathologist Eleni Antoniou concluded in a post-mortem on Friday that his death was a result of drowning. Agapiou had been spotted calling for help while swimming in the sea near the nautical club in the coastal town. But by the time fellow bathers and a rescue team managed to get to him and bring him to shore, Agapiou was already dead.
Agapiou was elected deputy with AKEL in 1991 and again in 1996. Ten years later, he was appointed head of the newly-created independent police complaints authority.
More recently, he was one of three criminal investigators working on the re-examination of the death of the 20-year-old Russian Oxana Rantseva. She had fallen to her death in March 2001 while trying to escape from a locked fifth floor Limassol flat owned by a cabaret owner’s employee.
Police ordered a re-investigation after Cyprus was found guilty by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) last January of failing on multiple accounts to protect Rantseva.
Agapiou’s funeral was attended by President Demetris Christofias, Limassol Bishop Athanasios, government ministers, party leaders, deputies, friends and relatives.
