The Pak Banker

Death toll in Cyclone Shaheen now 5

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The death toll from Cyclone Shaheen rose to five Monday while other fishermen from Iran remained missing as the storm moved further inland into Oman and weakened.

Authoritie­s in Oman said they found the body of a man who disappeare­d when floodwater­s swept him away from his vehicle. On Sunday as the storm made landfall, they said a child similarly drowned and two foreigners from Asia died in a landslide.

In Iran, state television said rescuers found the body of one of five fishermen who went missing off Pasabandar, a fishing village near the Islamic Republic's border with Pakistan. Earlier on Sunday, Iranian deputy parliament speaker Ali Nikzad said he feared as many as six fishermen had been killed because of the cyclone. India's Meteorolog­ical Department, the top forecaster­s for cyclones that sweep across the Indian Ocean, said winds from Shaheen now gust up to 90 kph (55 mph) and would continue to weaken. It predicted the storm would weaken into a tropical depression in the coming hours. Shaheen made landfall with winds reaching up to 150 kph (93 mph).

Omani state television broadcast images of flooded roadways and valleys as the storm churned deeper into the sultanate, its outer edges reaching the neighborin­g United Arab Emirates. The Emirates, home to Abu Dhabi and Dubai, had issued warnings to residents that the storm was coming. Winds had picked up in the country from Sunday, sweeping across the grounds of Dubai's newly opened Expo 2020. A cyclone is the same as a hurricane or a typhoon; their names only change because of their location. Hurricanes are spawned east of the internatio­nal date line. Typhoons develop west of the line. They are known as cyclones in the Indian Ocean and Australia.

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