Hundreds are feared dead after a ferry carrying more than 700 passengers and crew sank in rough seas during a typhoon off the central Philippines, officials and reports said Sunday.
The MV Princess of the Stars went down at around noon Saturday (0400 GMT) several kilometres off the coast of Sibuyan Island after being battered by huge waves when its engines failed, officials and survivors said.
Four bodies washed ashore on Sibuyan and four survivors were found, but the death toll is likely to rise sharply with the fate of the rest of the passengers and crew unknown, officials and reports said.
The increasingly desperate search for survivors was halted for the evening as frantic relatives descended on the offices of the ferry company demanding to know why the ship had been allowed to set sail with a typhoon approaching.
One of the known survivors, crew member Reynato Lanorio, said the ship listed and sank in just 15 terrifying minutes. "It seemed like everything happened in 15 minutes. Next thing we knew, the ship had gone under," he said, adding the captain of the 23,824-tonne vessel gave orders to abandon ship shortly after it listed, sending passengers and crew scrambling for life rafts.
"Many of us managed to get on the lifeboats, but I don't know if they survived," the crew member told DZBB radio from his hospital bed where he was being treated for cuts to his face.
He added four other people on his raft were wrenched away by the huge waves while he clung on for dear life. Some reports said the vessel began taking water after the hull of the ferry developed a hole. Witnesses reported lifejackets from the doomed vessel washing ashore along with the shoes of children and other debris.
"There were many plastic slippers of children also found floating on the shore but no survivors," said Nanette Tansingco, mayor of San Fernando, a coastal town on Sibuyan about 260 kilometres (160 miles) south of Manila.
The ship, en route from the capital Manila to the central island of Cebu and 16 hours into its 22-hour voyage, issued a distress signal before going down.
A police boat reached the site early on Sunday, and officers found the ferry flipped over with only its bow visible above the water line, Tansingco told local radio.
"They reported to me that there was a big hole amidships," the mayor said. The vessel was one of hundreds that ply the waters in this impoverished nation, where many people rely on inexpensive but sometimes dangerously overloaded ferries to travel between its thousands of islands.
President Gloria Arroyo demanded to know why the ferry was allowed to leave with the typhoon about to hit the country.
"I want answers," she said from on board the presidential plane en route to the United States. Pope Benedict XVI pledged to say a "special prayer to God" for the Philippines, a deeply religious country.
Typhoon Fengshen swept through the central Philippines on Saturday, leaving hundreds dead or missing elsewhere as heavy rains and strong winds triggered floods and landslides that destroyed buildings.
Residents of San Fernando said wreckage, apparently from the vessel, was coming ashore. "Life jackets and debris litter the shore. I saw a dead woman in her 40s along the shore but she was the only body I saw. There is no one else," resident Melanie Rotoni told DZMM radio.
Coast guard spokesman Commander Armand Balilo said the ship's manifest listed 626 passengers and 121 crewmen, revising down an earlier number of more than 800 on board.
Regional coast guard official Cecil Chen said the Princess of the Stars was cleared to leave Manila on Friday shortly before the typhoon changed its course.
With the typhoon approaching, the captain was instructed to take shelter and "attempted to do that," Chen said However, the engine failed and the vessel was left stranded in the water off Sibuyan's south-east coast.
"The engine conked out and (with) the vessel dead on the water, no immediate assistance could be rendered on the vessel. It suffered the consequence of drifting to the shallow portion and was grounded," he said.
Congressman Eleandro Madrona, the legislator representing Romblon province, reported to the civil defence office that the captain of the ferry "issued the order to abandon the vessel... after the hull was holed and water entered the engine room."