A passenger boat carrying nearly 270 people capsized off Northern Cyprus, killing at least seven people and setting off a search for 23 others who were still missing. Ünal Üstel said 237 people had been rescued from the vessel, and that none of those pulled from the water was in a critical condition.
The capsizing happened while the Filo Jet was traveling from Girne to Taşucu in southern Turkey, a route it was still on when it began taking on water just a few miles from the Cyprus coast. Üstel said the vessel went down because of difficult weather conditions, but the early accounting left one point unsettled: the ship had been carrying 259 passengers and 8 crew members, yet the rescue total and the number still being searched for did not fully settle who was aboard and who was not accounted for.
The search effort drew in four coastguard vessels from northern Cyprus, a passenger vessel and two coastguard helicopters, with rescue teams bringing people ashore in Girne as ambulances lined up at the harbor. Live video from the port showed helicopters and rescue boats arriving through the morning, a sign of how quickly the response widened as the scale of the disaster became clear.
MarineTraffic tracking data showed the vessel north of Girne on Sunday morning before its transmissions stopped, placing the boat close to the coast before trouble escalated. The incident now stands as a grim maritime emergency with the death toll already confirmed and crews still working against time to find the missing people, even as the final accounting of everyone on board remains unresolved in the first reports.
