At least 28 people have died, 7 are missing and some 230 have been rescued after the fire that occurred last night on a passenger ferry in Basilan, in the southern Philippines, the coast guard confirmed to EFE on Thursday.
In addition, “there are seven missing at the moment, but surely there will be more,” Comodoro Rejard Marfe, spokesman for the coast guard, told EFE today, adding that among the 230 rescued there are at least 9 people who are injured.
The MV Lady Mary III boat was carrying around 250 people, although there were only 205 officially registered, when a fire of still unknown cause surprised the occupants on Wednesday night, while the boat was sailing near the coast of Baluk Baluk Island, in Basilan province, on the southern island of Mindanao, where it is now stranded.
It was the same coastguards who helped run the ferry off the Basilan coast, as confirmed to EFE.
For his part, the governor of Basilan, Hadjiman Salliman, told The Inquirer newspaper that at least 11 bodies were found inside the ship, while the rest were found in the sea.
The ship covered the route from the city of Zamboanga to Zulu, and it is being investigated whether the ferry has spilled oil into the sea as a result of the fire, the coast guard confirmed in a statement through social networks.
The Philippines suffers numerous shipwrecks every year caused by bad weather, failure to comply with minimum safety standards and overloading of ships.
In December 1987, the country faced an unprecedented disaster in the history of civil navigation, when nearly 4,400 people lost their lives in a collision with an oil tanker from the “Doña Paz” ferry.
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