Eight people have died and 18 remain unaccounted for after a passenger catamaran capsized off Kyrenia on Sunday afternoon, President of the internationally unrecognized "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC)" Tufan Erhürman said after a meeting of the crisis coordination centre. Erhürman said rescuers had reached 249 of the 267 people on board, eight of whom did not survive. Identification work was still under way on four of the dead.
Search-and-rescue operations will continue through the night with four ships, two night-vision helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles and aircraft, Erhürman said. He added that equipment capable of operating at depth had set out from Turkey and would join the effort — the first indication that the operation is moving from a surface search toward the wreck itself, which Erhürman said earlier in the day was lying in more than 500 metres of water.
Erhürman said he had spent several hours at the crisis coordination centre alongside "prime minister" Ünal Üstel, "ministers," the commander of the Turkish army corps stationed in the occupied areas, the "security forces commander" and the head of the "civil defence organisation." Assets and capabilities provided by Turkey were already being used in the operation, he said.
The catamaran, operated by Filo Denizcilik, left Kyrenia for Taşucu, near Mersin, on Sunday afternoon with 259 passengers and eight crew aboard. Üstel said earlier that the "Department of Ports" ("Limanlar Dairesi") had initially refused the vessel permission to sail because of the weather, that it departed roughly an hour behind schedule, and that it was then caught in the storm and began taking on water. Turkish media reported that the captain issued a Mayday call a couple of miles out and tried to turn back to port; the attempt failed.
Survivors were ferried to Kyrenia port through the afternoon by boat, ambulance and helicopter and taken on to hospital, where, as relayed by the "health ministry," their condition was not described as serious. A crisis coordination centre was set up at the port once state, government and military officials arrived, and ambulances were dispatched from the quayside in continuous succession.
Erhürman has cautioned against drawing conclusions about the cause. He noted that Saturday's weather had been bad but Sunday's had not, said police were investigating, and indicated that clearer information was expected within a few days.
Note on figures: Erhürman's account is internally consistent — 249 people reached plus 18 not yet reached equals the 267 aboard. Read against the 16:17 figures (237 rescued, seven dead, 23 missing), the number of survivors has risen to 241, the death toll by one, and the number unaccounted for has fallen by five. Note the change in formulation: earlier tallies counted the rescued and the dead separately, whereas Erhürman's 249 folds the eight dead into the total "reached." Readers comparing numbers across the day should account for that difference rather than treat 249 as a survivor count.
Photo: Gemini