Dead body found on beach in Famagusta

A dead body was found on Silver beach in Engomi Ammochostou, near Famagusta, on Sunday.

The Turkish Cypriot police said the body was found near the rocks on the beach, and that it was a female. They added that it has not yet been identified, and that their investigation into the matter is ongoing.

The body is the latest in a series to have been found on and near Cyprus’ coast so far this year, though currently its origin is not yet known.

Most recently, a dead body was found on Larnaca’s Finikoudes beach a week ago, while a severed human foot was found at Lara Bay in May.

Previously, a body was found in an advanced stage of decomposition in the area of Sotira in the Famagusta district, while bodies had also been found on beaches in the Karpas peninsula and near Ayios Epiktitos on the island’s northern coast.

Many but not all of those bodies found on Cyprus’ coasts were believed to have been people who lost their lives on migrant boats headed for Cyprus from Lebanon.

Following the finding of two bodies near Ayios Epiktitos in the space of 24 hours and eight bodies on Turkey’s southeastern coast, the governor’s office of Turkey’s Antalya province said it had contacted the Lebanese Embassy in Ankara to inform them that contact had been lost with “a ship carrying around 90 people” which had departed from Lebanon bound for Cyprus.

The bodies which washed up in the north were given funerals, with four of them buried in Rizokarpaso and two more buried in Ayios Amvrosios, near Ayios Epiktitos.

“The dead bodies washed up on the shore in recent days and the findings that the clothes on a few of these bodies are Syrian-made point to an urgent and serious humanitarian situation,” the Refugee Rights Association, a non-governmental organisation in the north, said.

“This situation is a reflection of the civil war in Syria and human rights violations in the region, and requires urgent measures to be taken,” it added.