A passenger ferry carrying 267 people capsized off the coast of northern Cyprus on Sunday minutes after leaving port, killing at least eight and leaving 23 unaccounted for, with survivors filmed clinging to the overturned hull as coastguard and civilian vessels raced to reach them.

The catamaran, named by the Turkish Cypriot Interior Ministry as the Filojet, left the port of Kyrenia — also known as Girne — at 12.30 p.m. local time and began taking on water almost immediately for reasons authorities have not established. It was bound for Taşucu, in Turkey’s Mersin province, on one of several shuttle services that link northern Cyprus with the Turkish mainland daily. The ministry said it started shipping water about four nautical miles offshore.

Turkish Cypriot Transport Minister Erhan Arıklı put the complement at 259 passengers and eight crew.

The count, and where it stops adding up

Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhürman told CNN Türk in a live broadcast that 237 people had been brought out alive, seven had died and 23 were still being sought. “We have reached 237 people alive. However, we have also recovered seven people who lost their lives,” he said. “We have still not been able to reach 23 people. Search and rescue teams are working very intensively to find them.”

Those three figures sum precisely to the 267 aboard. Al Jazeera later reported at least eight dead, which does not reconcile with the same 237-and-23 split — the additional death came after Prime Minister Ünal Üstel’s account of the rescue, and the missing figure has not been restated against it. The counts should be read with the hour and the official attached to each, not merged into a single running total.

Erhürman said reaching anyone still inside the vessel “does not appear easy at the moment”, adding that other technologies were being brought to bear.

Crew detained

Police have detained the captain and seven crew members, Al Jazeera reported. No charges have been announced and no official cause has been given for the water ingress.

Cyprus was hit by fierce storms on Saturday, and one man died when his sailboat was driven onto rocks in the island’s south-east. Asked whether the weather explained the capsize, Erhürman noted the storm but said conditions on Sunday had been considered suitable for sailing.

Four Turkish Cypriot coastguard vessels and a civilian passenger boat were sent to the scene alongside five Turkish coastguard vessels and two helicopters. Üstel, speaking after chairing a crisis committee, said “our sole priority right now is human life.”

Context

Cyprus has been divided since 1974. The north is administered by the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, recognised internationally only by Turkey — which is why the response has been coordinated between Turkish Cypriot authorities and Ankara, with the Republic of Cyprus government commenting separately.

The scale of the toll moved sharply through the day. Ada Derana’s first filing carried only Üstel’s statement that there were “some fatalities” and that around 100 passengers had been evacuated, while the Daily Mirror’s early evening report still recorded no confirmed casualties. Neither the vessel’s age and inspection history nor the nationalities of the dead and missing had been reported at the time of writing.

Sources