Two more bodies have been pulled from the wreckage of a ferry which sank off the coast of Kyrenia, bringing the total number of confirmed dead to 12, Turkish Cypriot ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel said on Friday.

“It has been determined that the two bodies recovered as a result of deep-water search operations conducted by the Turkish naval forces vessels the TCG Isin and the TCG Alemdar are those of women. Our police department has initiated identification procedures,” he said.

He added that efforts to locate the 16 people who remain missing “are continuing uninterrupted, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with the strong support of the Republic of Turkey and the participation of all relevant units”.

“All teams involved in the search operations will continue their work with the same determination and diligence to locate the missing individuals,” he said.

It is expected that the bodies will now be sent to northern Nicosia’s Dr Burhan Nalbantoglu hospital to be identified.

Ustel had said on Friday night that “more bodies” had been “visible” following the recovery of Elmas Demir, who was identified on Friday morning after her body was extracted from the wreckage on Thursday, and that as such, he hoped it would be possible to recover more bodies on Friday.

Earlier, Turkey’s defence ministry spokesman Zeki Akturk had said that seven ships and 11 aircraft from the Turkish navy are participating in the search-and-rescue operation off Kyrenia, with those ships including the two deep-sea rescue vessels, the TCG Isin and the TCG Alemdar.

Meanwhile, Turkish Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz visited Cyprus on Thursday, and said that of the 133 people who were initially hospitalised on Sunday after being brought to shore alive following the accident, only two remain in hospital.

Those two people, he said, are “not in a critical condition”.