Manila, March 30, (dpa/GNA) – At least 10 people were killed, after a ferry caught fire in the southern Philippines, coastguard and disaster officials said Thursday.
A total of 195 passengers and 35 crew members were rescued from the MV Lady Mary Joy 3, which caught fire off Baluk-Baluk Island, about 885 kilometres south of Manila, around 11 pm Wednesday (1500 GMT), the provincial disaster agency said.
“Most of the passengers were sleeping when the fire broke out,” said Commodore Rejard Marpe, a coastguard district commander.
The cause of the fire was still unclear, but some survivors said it started from the air-conditioned cabins of the vessel, Marpe said.
Nixon Alonzo, chief of the Basilan disaster agency, said some passengers jumped into the sea when the fire broke out.
“Some of the fatalities were recovered from the vessel, and some drowned,” he said. “There were signs of burns in some of the victims.”
Sea travel is a major mode of transportation in the Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands.
The country was the site of the world’s worst peacetime shipping disaster in 1987, when more than 4,000 people died in a collision between a passenger ferry and an oil tanker just before Christmas.
GNA