A ninth body has been found by rescuers searching at the wreck of the ferry which sank off the coast of Kyrenia on Sunday, Turkish Cypriot ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel said on Wednesday evening.

He was flanked by six members of his cabinet as he delivered the news to the families of those who remain unaccounted for after the accident, with those families having been waiting outside the entrance to the new port of Kyrenia for four consecutive days. 

In contrast to previous occasions on which he or other officials have visited the tents in which relatives of the missing have been waiting for news of their loved ones, when voices and tensions have been heightened, Wednesday evening’s statement was greeted by silence among the scores of people who surrounded him.

On this occasion, he was also accompanied by a far greater police presence than usual, with dozens of officers filing out of the port to stand guard as he delivered the news. 

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He explained that the body belonged to a male who appeared to be in his 50s, and said that it has now been sent to the morgue at northern Nicosia’s Dr Burhan Nalbantoglu hospital to be identified.

Eight people had already been confirmed as dead as a result of the shipwreck, while 20 people were unaccounted for. Ustel said that efforts to identify the ninth body would commence on Wednesday night. 

He later stressed that search-and-rescue efforts “will continue 24/7”, with two Turkish deep-sea rescue vessels, the TCG Isin and the TCG Alemdar, operating off the coast of Kyrenia, joined by various other maritime and aerial means throughout the days and nights since Sunday. 

However, he also stressed that visibility is “very limited” at 550 metres below the surface of the sea, where the sunken ferry remains, and said that the operations are conducted using “robotic systems” which are shining lights into the ferry.

Asked whether any other bodies have been seen by rescuers, he said that “no other findings have been encountered so far”.

Earlier, the Turkish Cypriot ‘health ministry’ had said that three people remain in hospital after reaching the shore alive after the ferry sank. 

Exactly 259 passengers and eight crew members were on board the ferry when it capsized and sank within minutes of departing the new port of Kyrenia, shortly after midday on Sunday.

The finding of a ninth body comes at the end of a third day of funerals in Turkey of those already confirmed to have died.

At the funeral of Gulcan Gurel, her sister said that she had given her own life jacket to her daughter as the ferry began to sink.

Eda Payam, who was on the ferry and made it to shore alive, said at Gurel’s funeral in the Turkish city of Mersin that she, her sister, their father, Bayram, and Gurel’s daughter, Tusem, had travelled to Cyprus to visit the two sisters’ brother, Mehmet, who is a soldier based on the island. 

She said that when the ferry returning them to Turkey began to capsize, and as “panic ensued”, her sister had removed the life jacket she was wearing and given it to her daughter, before telling her, “my daughter is entrusted to you from now on”.

Gurel’s body had been flown from Cyprus to Cukurova airport, near Mersin, on Wednesday.

Later on Tuesday, the funeral of Fahri Ates (above), who also died in the ferry disaster, was held in his hometown, Erdemli, which lies west of Mersin.

Ates, a sergeant in Turkey’s gendarmerie, had travelled to Cyprus for a summer holiday with his wife, Fahri. Their son, Atabey, did not travel to Cyprus, but was at Wednesday’s funeral.

The ceremony was attended by Mersin province deputy governor Mehmet Ali Ozkan, provincial gendarmerie commander Sinasi Guclu, and other dignitaries.

The ferry began to capsize shortly after leaving the new port of Kyrenia at around midday, having been en route to the Turkish port of Tasucu.