Two Japanese have been confirmed as being among the dead on the Thai resort island of Phuket following Sunday's huge earthquake off Indonesia's Sumatra Island and the subsequent devastating tsunamis, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.
One is a woman, whose name the ministry withheld at her family' s request. The other is the 8-year-old son of Sadayuki Yoshino, 41, first secretary at the Japanese Embassy in Bangkok. Yoshino is among the Japanese missing on Phuket.
More than 20 Japanese remain unaccounted for in the tsunami-hit countries, including Thailand, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, according to the ministry.
A Tokyo-based travel agency announced early Tuesday that it is highly possible that seven bodies found in Sri Lanka are those of Japanese who were there on a tour organized by the company -- Tairiku Ryoyu (Tairiku Tours & Leisure).
The Japanese Embassy in Sri Lanka is trying to identify the bodies, the foreign ministry said.
Tairiku Ryoyu had reported that 12 of its tourists in Sri Lanka were missing. The five others have not yet been located, it said.
Meanwhile, Japan's education ministry said that four members of a family, one of whose children attends a Japanese school in New Delhi, have been unreachable since the disaster.