Sunday, August 18, 2013
At least 31 people
have died and around 170 are missing after a ferry collided with a cargo ship
in the Philippines.
More than 600
survivors have now been rescued since the MV Thomas Aquinas sank after a
collision with a cargo ship on Friday night.
Coastguard and
military vessels helped with the rescue, but the operation has been hampered by
rough seas.
The Philippines has a
poor record for maritime safety, with scores of people dying in accidents every
year.
'Strong
impact'
The collision happened
on Friday evening near the central city of Cebu - around 2 km (1.2 miles) from
the shore.
The MV Thomas Aquinas
was carrying 715 passengers and 116 crew, according to the latest coast guard
figures.
"The impact was very
strong," Rachel Capuno, a spokesperson for the owners of the ferry, told
local radio.
Survivors
said hundreds of passengers jumped into the ocean as the ferry began taking on
water and listing. The crew distributed life jackets.
Many of the passengers
were asleep and others struggled to find their way in the dark, reports said.
One survivor, Jerwin
Agudong, said he and other passengers jumped overboard in front of the cargo
vessel.
"It seems some
people were not able to get out," Mr Agudong told radio station DZBB.
"I pity the children. We saw dead bodies on the side, and some being
rescued."
It is believed 58
babies were among the passengers on board but it is unclear how many of them
died.
Many of the survivors
were sick from swallowing seawater and oil that is thought to have spilled from
the ferry.
Rear Admiral Luis
Tuason, of the coast guard, said more bodies had been found on Saturday and
that the death toll would almost certainly continue to rise.
"Because of the
speed by which it went down, there is a big chance that there are people
trapped inside," he told AFP.
Another coast guard
official told reporters that the cargo ship, Sulpicio Express 7, had 36 crew
members on board, but it did not sink.
Passengers on the
ferry had embarked at Nasipit in the southern province of Agusan del Sur.
The 11,000 tonne ferry
was 40 years old, and operated by a Chinese-owned company called 2Go, reports
the BBC's South East Asia Correspondent Jonathan Head.
The company became the
largest ferry operator in the Philippines three years ago, following a merger
of several smaller firms, our correspondent adds.
Joy Villages, an official at
the coastguard's public affairs office headquarters in Manila, told AFP it was
too early to determine the cause of Friday's collision.
She
said the Thomas Aquinas was a "roll-on, roll-off" ferry that
transports vehicles and is commonly used in the Philippines.
Maritime
accidents are quite frequent in the Philippine archipelago because of tropical
storms, badly maintained passenger boats and weakly enforced for safety
regulations.
The
world's worst maritime disaster in peacetime occurred in the Philippines in
December 1987. More than 4,000 people died when the Dona Paz ferry collided
with a tanker.
PHILIPPINE FERRY DISASTERS
- 1987: Dona Paz ferry sinks after colliding with a fuel tanker, 4,341 people die.
- 2008: The ferry MV Princess of the Stars capsizes during a typhoon, killing nearly 800.
