Eight bodies wash ashore in southern Turkey

Eight bodies washed ashore in southern Turkey in the past six days and most of them may be from a lost migrant ship sailing toward Cyprus from the Lebanese-Syrian coast, according to broadcaster Haberturk and the local governor’s office.

Authorities in the province of Antalya found the bodies of an adult and a child in the Manavgat and Alanya regions on Wednesday, Haberturk said, with another three bodies found in the area on Thursday and a sixth on Sunday.

Two other bodies were found at a hotel beach in the Serik region on Monday, it said, bringing the total to eight.

In a statement on Sunday, prior to the discovery of the last two bodies, the Antalya governor’s office said one of the bodies belonged to a Turkish national who had previously gone missing, pending forensics.

The other five bodies could be from the ship heading towards Cyprus, it said, adding that meteorological records over the past week indicated the ship may have sunk with the bodies washing north toward Turkey due to prevailing winds and waves.

This would correlate with events in Cyprus, where three dead bodies were found washed up on beaches on the Karpass peninsula within the space of 11 days.

“It has been conveyed by the Lebanese Embassy in Ankara that a ship carrying around 90 people departed from the coast between Lebanon and Syria for Cyprus on December 11 2023, that contact with the ship was cut hours later and the ship was lost after,” the governor’s office said.

“It has been identified that the production location of the shoes and clothes of the other five bodies are Syria.”

The Lebanese Embassy in Ankara was not immediately available for comment.