After being hit by a typhoon last week, the Philippine Islands has suffered another disaster in the form of a ferry and container ship collision near Cebu. The death toll is now 55 due to the collision, sources say.
Divers from the Philippine navy retrieved the bodies of passengers of a ferry that sank after a collision with a cargo ship. The retrieval operation done Monday resulted to the discovery of more passenger remains bringing the death toll to a total of 55, the Philippine Coast Guard representatives say.
The Coast Guard also people missing but that 750 of the passengers have been rescued. On Monday, divers found a child's lifeless body near the hull of the sunken ferry. The divers then entered the vessel to recover more bodies said in a report by Lt. Cmdr. Gregory Fabic, a spokesman for the Philippine Navy.
The retrieval operation was halted later in the afternoon though due to bad weather. Much like the Philippine capital, the island of Cebu is getting heavy rain.
Fabic told reporters however that more divers are to arrive Monday to help with the retrieval and rescue efforts.
The collision between the two water vessels happened Friday evening in the Mactan Channel located around 2 miles in the northwest of Cebu City -the country's first capital. The sunken ferry St. Thomas Aquinas was traversing the area from the city of Butuan when the unfortunate collision with the Sulpicio cargo ship occurred. The Sulpicio had 20 personnel aboard and were on their way to Davao located in the third largest island of the archipelago.
While the passenger ship sank, they were able to send out a distress call to which the Philippine Coast Guard responded to. The personnel of the cargo ship that sunk the small ferry collaborated with the Coast Guard during the rescue efforts, sources say.
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