UPDATE 1-At least 4 dead after ferry down in Philippines
Sat Jun 21, 2008 11:18pm EDT
(Adds details throughout)
By Rosemarie Francisco
MANILA, June 22 (Reuters) - A ferry with more than 700 people sank off the coast of the central Philippines in winds and high waves caused by Typhoon Fengshen and at least four people were killed, local officials said on Sunday.
"I sent a speed boat to check," Nanette Tansingco, a mayor of the coastal town of Romblon province, told local radio.
"They saw the boat upside down with a big hole in the hull."
She said at least four bodies were found and childrens' slippers were scattered on the shoreline.
The MV Princess of Stars stalled in rough seas near Sibuyan island on Saturday with 626 passengers and 121 crew on board as Fengshen, with winds gusting up to 195 kph (121 mph), ripped through the Philippines archipelago.
Coast guard vessels were unable to reach the ferry due to high waves and winds.
"We were told that at around 5 am the captain sounded the abandon ship signal," said Lieutenant General Pedro Inserto, military commander in the Visayas, the central region of the Philippines.
A local councillor, Ricardo Aligno, said the bodies of two women had been washed ashore. He said on a radio programme that more corpses had been found in other villages but high winds and rain made it difficult to reach those communities.
The coast guard was still verifying the reports early Sunday.
The ship, with a gross tonnage of 23,824.17 and total passenger capacity of 1,992 people, was enroute to the central province of Cebu from Manila.
Fengshen has already killed at least 17 people in the southern Philippines including an 8-year old girl and her grandfather who were buried in a "trash slide" at a rubbish dump in Cotabato City.
Over 20,000 people were being housed in evacuation centres in the centre and south of the archipelago, where the storm had triggered flashfloods, landslides and torn up trees and power lines.
In Iloilo City, the navy was using rubber boats to rescue some residents marooned on the roofs of their houses.
The typhoon pelted Manila with torrential rain and high winds early on Sunday, triggering power outages in many parts of the capital.
Most domestic and international flights were either delayed or cancelled and the airconditioning at Manila's international airport was only partly working.
Fengshen, the sixth typhoon to hit the Philippines this year, is headed north and expected to hit Taiwan in the next few days, according to storm tracker website http://www.tropicalstormrisk.com/.
About 20 typhoons hit the Philippines every year, triggering flooding and mass evacuations. Environmental groups blame illegal logging for making flooding worse, particularly in the central Philippines, where more than 5,000 people were killed in 1991 by floodwaters triggered by a typhoon. (Reporting by Carmel Crimmins; Additional reporting by Rosemarie Francisco and Manny Mogato; Editing by Valerie Lee)
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