Survivors of a deadly ferry disaster off the northern coast of Cyprus on Monday described chaos aboard the vessel as it listed dangerously to one side and seawater splashed into the passenger cabin. Families scrambled to find life vests and flee to the deck in hopes of being rescued as the catamaran-style ferry capsized and eventually sank.
Not all of them made it.
“My daughter slipped away from my hands,” Ayten Bicer, a survivor, told Turkey’s NTV news channel. “Her hand slipped out of my hands. They slipped like oil.”
The girl, Saliha Miray, 12, and her brother Mehmet Asaf, 9, are still missing, Ms. Bicer said.
At least eight people died when the ferry capsized on Sunday afternoon, according to the authorities in northern Cyprus. More than a dozen of the vessel’s remaining 267 passengers were still missing on Monday, raising the possibility that the death toll could rise.
The ferry departed around noon from the port of Kyrenia, known as Girne in Turkish, on the northern Cyprus coast, bound for the Turkish port of Tasucu. It quickly hit rough seas and passengers demanded that it turn back, survivors said in interviews with Turkish and northern Cypriot new outlets. The crew did not.
The ferry disaster sent shock waves of grief across northern Cyprus, an ethnically Turkish breakaway region whose claim to statehood is recognized only by Turkey. Its government has declared three days of mourning and opened a criminal investigation.
Nine suspects, including the captain and other crew members, appeared in court in northern Cyprus on Monday morning and were placed in pretrial detention. Seven others are also expected to be tried, the local news media reported.
Survivors told local news outlets about a trip gone horrifyingly wrong, with rough seas warnings ignored and insufficient safety precautions aboard the vessel.
Many of the passengers were residents of the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus; others had come from Turkey to the Mediterranean island for end-of-summer vacations.
Efe Multici, a survivor, told Turkey’s CNN Turk news channel that after the ferry left port, it began lurching up and down, slamming on the waves. At one point, the vessel seemed to jump in the air and came down so hard that one section broke and water flowed into the cabin, causing passengers to rush the exits. Some climbed on top of the ship as it listed onto its side or jumped into life rafts or the sea.
“Some people couldn’t find life buoys,” Mr. Multici said. “They were forced to jump without them. They couldn’t find life jackets either. There were those who jumped without life jackets.”
Mr. Multici eventually found a life jacket and made his way onto an inflatable dingy, he said, but it could not carry everyone trying to get off the ship. The northern Cypriot and Turkish coast guards have deployed boats and helicopters to rescue survivors and search the surrounding seas for the missing.
The Turkish enclave in northern Cyprus covers roughly the northern one-third of the island and is considered occupied territory by the internationally recognized government in Nicosia.
The Turkish military occupied the area in 1974 amid violence between the island’s ethnic Greek and Turkish populations. In 1983, northern Cyprus declared itself an independent Turkish republic.
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