A ferry sank in stormy waters in the central Philippines early Thursday leaving at least 12 people dead and more than 100 missing, the military said. Huge waves rolled over the 400-tonne MV Blue Water as it lay half-submerged near the coast of San Francisco town south-east of Manila as dusk approached, some 12 hours after the accident, with rescue efforts halted, local officials said.
Divers were on standby, waiting for calmer seas before going into the water to check the ferry's cabins where many of the missing passengers are feared to have been trapped, said Perpetuo Garcia, a local official. "Rescue efforts were halted before midday. They are set to try again before it gets dark," he told AFP by telephone.
The sinking came as super-typhoon Man-yi streaked off the eastern Philippines en route to southern Japan. "The captain, Virgilio Retardo, interviewed by my lieutenant, said there were 256 passengers and 14 vehicles onboard when the vessel went down," the regional military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Rhoderick Parayno, told AFP.
So far, they had found 129 survivors and 12 bodies, he said. "We can't be sure of the number of people missing because we don't know the exact number of the passengers," he added. The roll-on roll-off vessel went down in the Sibuyan Sea off the southern tip of Luzon island at dawn while en route to the island of Masbate from Lucena in southern Luzon.