Many dead and hundreds rescued in Philippine ferry sinking

A ferry with more than 350 people on board sank early Monday near an island in the southern Philippines. Rescuers have saved at least 316 passengers and retrieved 15 bodies.

Philippine Coast Guard personnel were helping passengers of a sunken ferry get on board their vessel.

The M/V Trisha Kerstin 3, an inter-island cargo and passenger ferry, was sailing from the port city of Zamboanga to southern Jolo island in Sulu province with 332 passengers and 27 crew members

when it encountered technical problems and sank after midnight, coast guard officials said.

The ferry sank in good weather nearly two kilometres from the island village of Baluk-baluk in Basilan province.

One of the rescued passengers, Mohamad Khan, said the ferry abruptly tilted to one side and took on water, hurling people including him and his wife, who was holding their 6-month-old baby, into the sea in the darkness.

He and his wife were rescued, but their baby drowned. "My wife lost hold of our baby and all of us got separated at sea," a distraught Khan told a volunteer rescuer.

Coast guard and navy ships, along with a surveillance plane, an air force Black Hawk helicopter and fleets of fishing boats were carrying out search and rescue operations off Basilan.

The cause of the ferry sinking was not immediately clear and there will be an investigation, according to a coast guard official. Adding the coast guard cleared the ferry before it left the Zamboanga port and there was no sign of overloading.