A fifteenth body has been recovered from the wreckage of the ferry which sank off the coast of Kyrenia last month, Turkish Cypriot ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel said on Saturday.
He said that procedures are underway to identify the body, with it expected that it will be taken to Nicosia’s Dr Burhan Nalbantoglu hospital to be identified.
“Our state has mobilised all its resources since the very moment the tragedy occurred. Efforts to locate the missing individuals are continuing without interruption. We remain confident that we will reach all the missing persons as soon as possible,” he said.
With the body having been recovered, the number of missing persons now stands at 13, though Saturday’s announcement constitutes the first recovery of a body from the wreckage in almost two weeks, with the fourteenth body having been recovered on September 6.
The body is also the first to be recovered since the deep-sea research and survey ship the Optimus Prime arrived in the waters off Kyrenia on Monday, with the vessel having been commissioned by the Turkish government and the Turkish Cypriot authorities to aid the efforts being made by the two Turkish naval ships, the TCG Isin and the TCG Alemdar.
Those two ships have been located off Kyrenia since the beginning of the month, with backup having been requested after Ustel said on September 6 that “as the days pass, the conditions for the search-and-rescue operation, especially underwater and inside the sunken boat, are becoming increasingly difficult”.
Meanwhile, ‘transport minister’ Faiz Sucuoglu said that the Optimus Prime “has a different capability and feature” compared to the two naval vessels, while also describing the ferry disaster as “one of the greatest tragedies” Cyprus has seen “since 1974”.
The ferry capsized shortly after leaving the new port of Kyrenia en route to the Turkish port of Tasucu at a little after midday on August 30, with 259 passengers and eight crew members on board.
All eight members of the boat’s crew, including its captain, Mustafa Oz, were arrested on the day of the disaster, and all eight, as well as a director of the ferry’s operating company, Filo Denizcilik, remain in custody.
They most recently appeared in court on Friday, where a police representative said that after a crack in the boat was noticed in June, it only underwent “superficial” repairs.
Previously, it had been said in court that the captain Oz had bought his Honduran captain’s licence for $3,500. A police representative said at the time that Oz had said under questioning that he had initially obtained a licence in Turkey, but that it had become invalid after he did not work as a boat captain for 10 years.
The Cyprus Mail has contacted Honduras’ directorate-general of merchant maritime in an attempt to verify the authenticity of the licence.
