Hopes fade for Philippine ferry victims

Rescuers held little hope yesterday of finding some 800 people missing from a capsized ferry in the Philippines, as divers prepared to drill into the ship's hull in the hope of finding survivors in air pockets.

Coast guard boats searched the area around the ferry, which capsized during a typhoon with gusts up of to 195 kph on Saturday afternoon. By yesterday only 33 people had been found alive.

A spokesman for the navy said a team approached the ship on Sunday afternoon to check for possible survivors.

"We just approached the hull of the ship, we got near and then banged, knocked in order for us to give a sign if ever there are still people inside," Lieutenant-Colonel Edgard Arevalo said. "Unfortunately there was no response."

Typhoon Fengshen pounded the archipelago at the weekend, washing away houses and roads and forcing tens of thousands to evacuate. Aside from the ferry disaster, a further 155 people were killed, according to the Red Cross.

A US vessel was en route to help with search efforts and was expected to reach the site in around 15 hours, Jesus Dureza, a spokesman from the presidential palace said.

Nine male corpses believed to be passengers from the MV Princess of Stars washed ashore on the central island of Masbate yesterday.

"The bodies were bloated and decomposing. What we did was just to wrap them up and buried them right away," a local mayor told radio.

Photographs showed only the tip of the ship's bow visible above the waves. In the worst-hit province of Iloilo, damage to agriculture and infrastructure was pegged at €24 million.

The Department of Agriculture said in a statement nearly 250,000 ha of farmland was damaged, mostly paddy fields, at a cost of nearly 555 million pesos.

Disaster officials were worried about food supplies for evacuees, crammed into schools, churches and townhalls.

"I don't think they have enough rice to tide them over," Richard Gordon, the chairman of the Philippines' Red Cross, told local television.

A passenger picked up by a fishing boat and 28 others who landed at a small coastal village after drifting for more than 24 hours in a rubber boat, were the latest survivors from the Princess of Stars.

Philippine transport authorities said yesterday they had grounded the vessels of ferry company Sulpicio Lines for inspection. The company's ships have been involved in three other major disasters over the past 21 years.

Chronology: Deadliest ferry disasters in the Philippines

Following is a list of some of the deadliest shipping disasters in the archipaelago over the past two decades.

• December 1987 - A total of 4,386 die in world's worst peacetime shipping disaster, as ferry Dona Paz, owned by Sulpicio Lines, and an oil tanker collide off Mindoro Island.

• October 1988 - Dona Marilyn, sister ship of Dona Paz, sinks off Leyte province, killing around 300.

• July 1993 - 279 pilgrims drown when an overloaded wooden temple, mounted on three boats, collapses during a religious festival as it is being towed along the Bocaue river, 20 kilometres north of Manila.

• December 1994 - Ferry Cebu City collides with Singapore oil tanker, killing more than 140.

• September 1998 - Almost 200 die when ferry MV Princess of the Orient, sister ship of Dona Paz and Dona Marilyn, sinks in stormy seas near Cavite and Batangas.

• April 2000 - At least 138 drown after the ML Annahada sinks off Jolo island in the southern Philippines.

• February 2004 - Super-ferry 14 catches fire near Manila Bay, killing 116 people. Abu Sayyaf claims responsibility, saying a suicide bomber sabotaged the boat to protest ill treatment of Muslim communities.

• June 2008: MV Princess of Stars sinks three kilometres from Sibuyan island in central Philippines in typhoon-lashed seas, leaving around 800 people missing.