Boat with around 270 people on board capsizes off North Cyprus; one dead

NICOSIA, Aug 30 (Reuters) - One person died after a boat with around 270 people on board capsized off North Cyprus on Sunday, Turkish Cypriot media reported.

Turkish Cypriot Transport Minister Erhan Arikli told Anadolu that one passenger had died when the ferry capsized. He said there were 267 people on board, 259 of whom were passengers and eight of whom were crew.

The privately owned ferry left the North Cyprus port of Kyrenia at 12:30 p.m. (0930 GMT) and immediately started taking on water for an unknown reason, Turkey's state-run news agency Anadolu reported.

It was heading for the Turkish port of Tasucu in Mersin province in the eastern Mediterranean.

Those rescued from the vessel were taken to Kyrenia port to be transferred to hospitals, he added.

Murat Senkul, the mayor of Kyrenia, told broadcaster CNN Turk that 159 passengers on board the vessel had been reached.

Video footage showed people in red life jackets sitting or standing on top of the overturned vessel as authorities scrambled coastguard and private vessels for assistance to bring them to shore.

The Kibris newspaper reported that the vessel, which some reports said was a catamaran, began taking in water about four miles off the shore.

(Reporting by Daren Butler and Michele Kambas; Editing by Alexandra Hudson and Jan Harvey)