Funerals were held on Tuesday for four people who died after a passenger ferry sank off the coast of Kyrenia on Sunday, with one of those buried being 14-year-old Nisa Torer.

Torer was buried in her native Mersin, having travelled to Cyprus on holiday with her father, 43-year-old Ferdi, and her two younger brothers, Yusuf and Yunus.

Both Yusuf and Yunus reached the shore alive, while Ferdi Torer remains unaccounted for three days after the ferry sank. The three children’s mother, Gunes Torer, died of cancer in 2022.

Meanwhile, Huseyin Ozdemir was buried in the town of Silifke, in the Mersin province. He had travelled to Cyprus to attend a wedding, alongside his wife Serif, his daughters, Sengul and Kamuran, and his son-in-law, Hakki. Serif is among the missing.

Nihat Balyemez was buried in Gaziantep, where his friend Mehmet Tuga, who was on board the ferry but survived the accident, said that Balyemez had “hit his head on something” while trying to get off the ferry as it began to sink and “probably lost his life there”.

Later, Reyhan Verim’s funeral was also held in Silifke, and attended by Mersin province governor Atilla Toros, MP Gulcan Kis and Turkish Cypriot diplomatic representative in Mersin Uruk Alemdar, among other dignitaries.

A total of eight people are known to have died as a result of the ferry’s sinking, with 20 more officially still missing.