Philippines ferry Thomas Aquinas sinks, many missing

At least twenty six folks have died and quite two hundred area unit missing when a ferry collided with a ship and sank off the Philippines.

The MV theologizer was in collision with the cargo ship on Friday evening close to the city centre of Cebu, officers same.

The ship was carrying 752 passengers and 118 crew, in line with latest coast guard figures.

The incident materialized around 2km (1.2 miles) from the shore.

The ferry was sailing into the port at Cebu - the country's second biggest town - once it collided with the ship travel the opposite approach at regarding 21:00 time (13:00 GMT).

"The impact was terribly robust," wife Capuno, a advocator for the house owners of the ferry, told native radio.

Survivors same many passengers jumped into the ocean because the ferry began taking up water and listing. The crew distributed life jackets.

The harm to the ship was clearly visible

Many of the passengers were asleep et al struggled to seek out their approach within the dark, reports same.

One survivor, Jerwin Agudong, same he and alternative passengers jumped overboard before of the cargo ship.

"It looks some folks weren't able to get out," man Agudong told station DZBB. "I pity the youngsters. we have a tendency to saw dead bodies on the facet, and a few being saved."

The ferry sank at intervals half-hour of the collision, the foetoprotein press agency reports.

Rear Admiral Luis Tuason of the coast guard same navy different recovered a minimum of four additional bodies from the wreck timely weekday.

"There may be additional bodies there however there have been ropes within that our different might get entangled in," he said.

The coast guard is to send additional different with deep instrumentality to assist recover bodies, he added.

Another coast guard official told reporters that the ship, Sulpicio specific seven, had thirty six crew members on board, however it failed to sink.

Passengers on the ferry had embarked at Nasipit within the southern province of Agusan del Sur.

The military service and a few industrial vessels were able to develop quite 600 survivors.

The 11,000 metric weight unit ferry was forty years previous, and operated by a Chinese-owned company referred to as 2Go, reports the BBC's South East Asia Correspondent Jonathan Head.

The company became the most important ferry operator within the Philippines 3 years past, following a merger of many smaller companies, our correspondent adds.

Joy Villages, an {officer|a political candidate} at the coastguard's public affairs office headquarters in Manila, told foetoprotein it absolutely was too early to work out the explanation for Friday's collision.

She same the theologizer was a "roll-on, roll-off" ferry that permits vehicles to be driven aboard and is usually utilized in the Philippines.

Maritime accidents area unit common within the Philippine terra firma owing to tropical weather, badly maintained traveler boats and weak social control of safety rules.

The world's worst maritime disaster in time period occurred within the Philippines in Dec 1987. quite four,000 folks died once the Dona Paz ferry collided with a tanker.