Muscat: Two young Omani men who died while rescuing two Saudi girls from drowning last Friday have become national heroes.
The men were able to pull the girls to safety.
The girls had slipped and fell into the water in Wadi Darbat in the governorate of Dhofar while taking pictures.
Hamyar Al Nasri, 25, and his nephew, Tarek Al Nasri, 21, jumped into the water to save the girls despite not knowing how to swim.
Speaking to Gulf News, Mustafa Al Nasri, Tarek’s older brother, described the scene.
“After they pulled the girls to safety the currents dragged them further from the shore,” he said.
“I jumped in to try to save them and told my brother to grab my t-shirt. When we were almost close to the shore he let go and disappeared in the blink of an eye.”
Mustafa says his brother and uncle were heroes and that he was not surprised that they jumped in the water to rescue the girls as they were “always offering help to others”.
While Omani authorities were able to recover the bodies, they were unable to resuscitate them.
The Saudi embassy in Muscat offered condolences to the Al Nasri faimly who hailed from Al Aishi village in the northern province of Bahla.
The Saudi ambassador to Oman also called the Tarek’s father to offer his personal condolences.
Meanwhile, the story of the heroic men went viral on social media, as users launched a hashtag in their memory “the two martyrs, Hamayar and Tarik”.
Users tweeted their condolences and hailed the men as heroes.
