Girl dies after car plunges into sea while boarding ferry

A five-year-old girl has died after a car plunged into the sea as it boarded a ferry in Istanbul.

AFP reports that the girl was with three women who were injured.

The ferry pulled away from the dock in the tourist district of Sirkeci as the last vehicle tried to board.

Hurriyet Daily News reports that the car slid back before falling into the sea.

Eyewitness Gürkan Sünbelli said: "I jumped into the sea to save them, but the girl slipped from my hand. The naval police then arrived and saved them."

The girl was alive when divers took her out of the water but she died in hospital.

The captain of the ferry and two crew members were arrested on charges of involuntary murder.

Last year, a toddler fell overboard a ferry into the River Mersey.

The three-year-old girl fell 16ft from the second tier of the Mersey Ferry into the freezing water as the boat came into the quayside at Seacombe Ferry Terminal.

Two members of Mersey Ferry staff were hailed as heroes after jumping into the water and saving the girl from drowning, or potentially being crushed against the sea wall.

Eyewitnesses said they heard a woman screaming, before seeing the little girl struggling in the water below.

Eyewitness Joe Hughes, a civil servant who was also on the ferry, told the Liverpool Echo: "I was on the ferry just before when it was docking in Seacombe and a young girl somehow toppled over and fell into the water. There was a gap between the ferry and the dock. Me and a friend were on the top deck and there was a lot of commotion or shouting and the girl was down there."

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