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The M/V Asia Malaysia tilts to its right before sinking near Iloilo in central Philippines yesterday |
The steel-hulled M/V Asia Malaysia was heading from the central Cebu region to Iloilo province on an overnight trip when it began to tilt to its right, or starboard side, at dawn yesterday, coast guard chief Admiral Ramon Liwag said. The cause of the problem was not immediately clear.
The ship’s captain sent a distress call to the coast guard and ordered all passengers and his crewmen to abandon the 2,400-tonne vessel, which tilted about 6kms from its destination before sinking amid rain, coast guard spokesman lieutenant commander Algier Ricafrente said.
Coast guard vessels, fishermen and two passenger ships saved 168 passengers and crewmen from the ship, which had a capacity of 550 people, Ricafrente said.
It was unclear how many people the ship was carrying.
A coast guard helicopter was scouring the area for other possible survivors and to check whether there was an oil slick from the ship, he said.
The ship captain told Coast Guard officials that the vessel listed after taking in water when it was battered by strong and big waves
Although the weather has improved, rains were still battering the area, Ricafrente said.
Meanwhile, the death toll from tropical storm Nock-ten rose to 52 in the Philippines even as another approaching storm left two more people missing, the civil defence office said yesterday.
Tropical storm Mufia was yesterday still about 990kms east of the country, but it has influenced the local weather, causing heavy rains and a tornado, said civil defence deputy officer Florentino Sison.
As Mufia approached, a fishing boat with eight men on board capsized due to strong rain just north of Manila last week, leaving two men missing and feared dead, said Sison of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council.
Another person was injured by a freak tornado in the same area on Friday, also due to Mufia’s influence, he added. “It (Mufia) did not have a direct effect but it has affected the local weather situation, causing a tornado, flooding and heavy rains,” Sison said.
Mufia, named after a Chinese flower, is moving northward and is not expected to hit land, he added.
Meanwhile, the death toll from Nock-ten’s rampage through the country in the previous week rose to 52 dead and 27 missing as more reports came in from storm-hit provinces in the archipelago.
Most of those killed were drowned or buried in landslides, while virtually all of the missing were fishermen who vanished at sea when the storm hit from Tuesday to Thursday, the council said.
Nock-ten, named after a Laotian bird, blew out into the South China Sea on Thursday, but over 121,000 people are still housed in government evacuation centres due to flooding left by the storm, the council added. An average of 20 storms and typhoons, many of them deadly, hit the Philippines annually. Nock-ten was the 10th this year. Agencies