Divers find bodies in sunken Philippine ferry

Source: Agencies  |   2008-6-24  |     ONLINE EDITION

Twenty-eight survivors from the ill-fated ship MV Princess of the Stars cheer at Quezon Memorial Hospital in Lucena city, 170 kilometers south of Manila, where they were brought yesterday after drifting in the sea for 48 hours. The MV Princess of the Stars ferry, with more than 700 passengers and crew on board, sank off Sibuyan Island in central Philippines at the height of typhoon Fengshen Saturday. More in photo gallery

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DIVERS found bodies floating inside a ferry that sank in the central Philippines with over 800 people on board, a navy spokesman said today, confirming grim fears.

"When they tried to enter the vessel they saw several corpses floating in the airpocket," Lieutenant Colonel Edgard Arevalo told Reuters.

He said it was unclear how many bodies were there because it was dark.

The bodies, still wearing lifevests, were trapped inside the Princess of the Stars when it went belly up off the central island of Sibuyan in waves as big as houses during Saturday's typhoon.

Arevalo said the coast guard planned to bore a hole inside the 23,824 tonne vessel to retrieve the corpses.

Drilling will have to be done cautiously because the ship is estimated to have around 100,000 litres of bunker fuel still on board.

A US military ship, the USNS Stockham, with helicopters on board, was on hand to help with rescue efforts.

Princess of the Stars was resting upside down with the tip of its bow above the water and its stern resting on the bottom of the sea, easily visible from shore.

So far at least 33 people have been found alive out of 864 passengers and crew on board.

Typhoon Fengshen, which has weakened to a tropical storm over the South China Sea, pounded the Philippines at the weekend with gusts of up to 195 kph (120 mph).

It is currently swirling towards southern China, where it is expected to dump more rain on already flood-ravaged regions in the next few days.

THE LATEST TRAGEDY

Aside from the ferry disaster, possibly the worst in the Philippines in over 20 years, at least 155 people were killed, largely by drowning, in a torrent of floods in the south and centre of the archipelago, according to the Red Cross.

The sixth typhoon to hit the archipelago this year badly damaged the country's already shoddy infrastructure, washing away thousands of homes as well as roads and bridges.