Survivors of a deadly ferry disaster off the northern coast of Cyprus on Monday described chaos aboard the vessel as it listed dangerously to one side and seawater splashed into the passenger cabin. Families scrambled to find life vests and flee to the deck in hopes of being rescued as the catamaran-style ferry capsized and eventually sank.

Not all of them made it.

“My daughter slipped away from my hands,” Ayten Bicer, a survivor, told Turkey’s NTV news channel. “Her hand slipped out of my hands. They slipped like oil.”

The girl, Saliha Miray, 12, and her brother Mehmet Asaf, 9, are still missing, Ms. Bicer said.

At least eight people died when the ferry capsized on Sunday afternoon, according to the authorities in northern Cyprus. More than a dozen of the vessel’s remaining 267 passengers were still missing on Monday, raising the possibility that the death toll could rise.

The ferry departed around noon from the port of Kyrenia, known as Girne in Turkish, on the northern Cyprus coast, bound for the Turkish port of Tasucu. It quickly hit rough seas and passengers demanded that it turn back, survivors said in interviews with Turkish and northern Cypriot new outlets. The crew did not.

The ferry disaster sent shock waves of grief across northern Cyprus, an ethnically Turkish breakaway region whose claim to statehood is recognized only by Turkey. Its government has declared three days of mourning and opened a criminal investigation.

Nine suspects, including the captain and other crew members, appeared in court in northern Cyprus on Monday morning and were placed in pretrial detention. Seven others are also expected to be tried, the local news media reported.