Cyclone Gonu, which struck Oman on Wednesday, killed 25 people and left a trail of destruction in the Sultanate's capital Muscat.

The official Oman News Agency said 25 people were confirmed killed by the storm, which turned the streets of the capital Muscat into rivers, flipping over cars, uprooting trees and severing electricity and phone lines. There were 26 people missing.

Three people were killed in southern Iran due to the storm, while those living within 300 metres of the coast in Hormozgan province had been evacuated, Iran state television said.

The storm had raised fears of a disruption to exports from the Middle East, which pumps over a quarter of the world's oil, pushing prices to around $71 a barrel.

Mina al Fahal, the only terminal for Oman's 650,000 barrels per day crude exports, remained closed for a third day and the main liquefied natural gas terminal at Sur, which was badly hit, was not operating either, a shipper said. Sur terminal handles 10 million tonners per year of LNG.

But there were no reports so far of serious damage to Oman's Mina al Fahal refinery or other oil facilities, port, shipping and oil company sources said. Sohar refinery and port had reopened and were working as before the storm, the company said.

Authorities were assessing damage and could reopen the terminals on Friday, shipping and port sources predicted.

A source at PDO, a majority state-owned firm that produces most of Oman's crude, said its facilities were not damaged.

All Omani private and public sector institutions, including the stock exchange, were closed until Sunday due to the storm.

Ziad bin Karim al-Hirmi, CEO of Oman Air, told state television that it was ready to resume flights on Friday morning provided the airport had reopened.

Oman's central bank governor Hamood Sangour al-Zadjali said storm damage would not have a major impact on the economy.

In Muscat, a massive cleanup was well under way as the sun popped out in the late afternoon yesterday and began drying Muscat off.

Workers with chain saws could be seen clearing downed trees while fleets of tow trucks went to work wrenching waterlogged cars and trucks from riverbeds.

The postcard-perfect mountains that are Muscat's pride became its pain during the cyclone. Torrential rains poured onto the bone-dry peaks and then flowed into canyons and dry riverbeds that channeled the raging water directly into the city.

Bridges collapsed. Buses were piled in the wadis, the normally dry riverbeds that course through the city. Muscat's lush palm and eucalyptus groves were blown over along with telephone and power lines.

Residents spoke of a night of horror as turgid floodwaters ripped into their homes, carried off refrigerators and cars, and left their streets gouged by sinkholes and caked in shoals of mud.

Nidhal al-Masharafi, 31, hunkered all night on his rooftop with his wife and six children, with just the cell phone he gripped in his hand.

'The water broke through the walls. It came inside the house. It swept everything out,' Al-Mashrafi said, limping as he wandered the bank of a flooded wadi.

A kilometer (half mile) from his home, al-Mashrafi found his 2006 Subaru Outback, lying atop a taxi in the rapids of a new roaring river that slashed through his neighbourhood.