Seychelles interior ministry has closed beaches on the island of Praslin and ordered holidaymakers to stay out of the sea after a British holidaymaker was killed in a shark attack while on honeymoon in the Indian Ocean.
Ian Martin Redmond, 30, from Lancashire, was attacked while snorkelling off Anse Lazio beach on the island of Praslin, said the police. A French man was killed in a shark attack off the same beach just two weeks ago.
At an emergency meeting last night, the Seychelles’ interior minister, Joel Morgan, ordered the closure of all surrounding beaches and banned swimming in waters around the scene of the attacks. Shark hunters are being flown in from South Africa to try to catch the shark.
The attacks came less than two months after the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge spent their honeymoon in the Seychelles, on the North Island, just 30 miles away but the two deaths are the first in the waters around the Indian Ocean islands for 50 years.
Mr Redmond was in the second week of his honeymoon. He had arrived with his new bride Gemma Houghton, 27 on August 14 and the couple had been due to leave Praslin on Friday to spend the weekend on the main island of Mahé before flying back to Britain. They had been staying at the four-star La Reserve hotel.
Police said he lost an arm and suffered hip injuries in the attack at 17:00 local time on Tuesday. He was taken to hospital but he had lost a lot of blood and the police spokesman Jean Toussaint said but had no chance of surviving.
By Linsey McNeill
