More bodies are now visible to rescue teams working at the wreckage of a ferry which sank off the coast of Kyrenia on Sunday, Turkish Cypriot ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel said late on Thursday night, with the finding of a tenth body having been announced earlier in the evening.

He visited the port of Kyrenia alongside his ‘deputy prime minister’ Fikri Ataoglu, and explained to the families of those who remain unaccounted for after the disaster, who have been waiting there for news since Sunday, that the body found on Thursday was “a woman, aged around 50 to 55 years old”.

The body, he said, has been sent to northern Nicosia’s Dr Burhan Nalbantoglu hospital to be identified.

“Given that more bodies were visible, we are hoping that [on Friday], we will be able to reach them,” he said, before adding that work to find and recover bodies from the ferry, which sank to a depth of 550 metres below the surface of the sea, would continue throughout the night.

Related Articles

Thus far, 10 people are confirmed to have died as a result of the accident, with it believed that 18 more are still missing.

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 had 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”.

He went on to say that the operation which recovered the tenth body had been personally overseen by Ercument Tatlioglu, the commander of Turkey’s navy, and stressed that in the coming weeks, “efforts will continue, seven days a week, 24 hours a day” to locate and recover the remaining 18 missing people.

In addition, he said that Turkey had “utilised all its capabilities” to lead the search-and-rescue efforts since the ferry sank shortly after midday on Sunday/

Ustel also spoke at the airport, and began his remarks by making reference to the collision of two commercial ships off the coast of Silivri, west of Istanbul, in the sea of Marmara. 

“We hope that those who remain missing, both here and there, are found soon,” he said, before saying that with the assistance offered by Turkey in the efforts to locate those missing after the ferry disaster, “once again, the Turkish Cypriot people was made to feel that it is not alone in this world”.

“At times like this, words fail us. This was a complete show of brotherhood. The Republic of Turkey and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus are two brother states, and from the very first instant, the Republic of Turkey was by our side,” he said.