The two bodies which were recovered on Friday from the wreck of a ferry which sank off the coast of Kyrenia were identified as Serife Ozdemir and Nazmiye Ozbolat, Turkish Cypriot ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel said on Friday night.

“The identification process for the bodies of two women recovered from the wreckage this morning has been completed,” he said, before adding that “their families have been duly informed”. 

He added that no further bodies have been recovered since the morning, with the number of people confirmed to have died as a result of the accident thus remaining at 12, while the number of people who are still accounted for stands at 16.

“Search-and-rescue operations to locate the missing individuals are continuing uninterrupted, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, with the strong support of the Republic of Turkety and the participation of all relevant units,” he said.

He then added that the Turkish Cypriot authorities are “monitoring developments on the ground moment by moment” and “persisting in our efforts to reach the missing individuals using all available resources”.

Earlier in the day, Mehmet Baybars Kucukatay, the Turkish navy’s southern field commander, said that on Friday, there were a total of nine ships and 11 aircraft taking part in the operation, supported by a team of 800 people. 

“We will continue searching at the bottom of the sea, underwater, above water, and on the coastline in the region,” he said, before making special reference to the remotely operated underwater vehicle which has been deployed by the Turkish deep-sea research ship the TCG Alemdar to search the sea floor. 

The vehicle, known as the “Rov”, is capable of grasping submerged objects with a maximum mass of 135 kilograms and bringing them to the surface at a maximum depth of 3,000 metres below the surface of the sea, with the ferry itself having sunk to a depth of 554 metres, according to Kucukatay.

Earlier, Turkish Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz had visited Cyprus on Thursday, and said that of the 133 people who were initially hospitalised on Sunday after being brought to shore alive following the accident, only two remain in hospital.

Those two people, he said, are “not in a critical condition”.