Divers search for survivors in capsized ferry

SIBUYAN ISLAND, Philippines - Divers found bodies floating inside a ferry that sank in the central Philippines with about 800 people on board, a navy spokesman said today, confirming grim fears.

"When they tried to enter the vessel they saw several corpses floating in the air pocket," Lieutenant Colonel Edgard Arevalo said.

He said it was unclear how many bodies were there because it was dark. He would not speculate on whether anyone still might be found alive but indicated that the elapsed time since the disaster on Saturday made it unlikely.

The bodies, still wearing life vests, were trapped inside the Princess of the Stars when it capsized off the central island of Sibuyan in waves as big as houses during Saturday's typhoon.

Arevalo said the coast guard planned to bore a hole inside the vessel to retrieve the corpses.

Drilling will have to be done cautiously because the ship is estimated to have around 100,000 liters of fuel on board.

A US military ship, the US Stockham, with helicopters on board, was nearby to help with rescue and recovery efforts.

Princess of the Stars was upside down with the tip of its bow above the water and its stern on the bottom of the sea.

So far at least 33 people have been found alive out of 864 passengers and crew on board.

Typhoon Fengshen, which weakened to a tropical storm over the South China Sea, pounded the Philippines over the weekend with gusts of up to 120 miles per hour.

The storm was swirling toward southern China, where it is expected to dump more rain on already flood-ravaged regions in the next few days.

Authorities in China's coastal province of Guangdong ordered local governments to prepare for disaster relief work.

Aside from the ferry disaster, possibly the worst in the Philippines in 20 years, at least 155 people were killed, largely by drowning, in a torrent of floods in the south and center of the archipelago, according to the Red Cross.

The sixth typhoon to hit the archipelago this year severely damaged the country's already shoddy infrastructure, washing away thousands of homes as well as roads and bridges.

In Iloilo, the province worst hit by Fengshen, about 200,000 people were forced to evacuate, the Red Cross said.

Complicating ferry rescue efforts, the coast guard said today another vessel, a cargo ship, had also sunk near the Princess of the Stars on Saturday.

Officials said three people died, six survived, and 17 were missing from the second ship and it was difficult to determine whether corpses found on the shore were from this vessel or the Princess of the Stars.

Shipping tragedies are frequent in the Philippines, an archipelago of about 7,000 islands where safety rules are poorly implemented and substandard vessels ply dangerous waters.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, on a state visit to the United States, has ordered a review of maritime regulations, and authorities have suspended the operations of the ferry's owner, Sulpicio Lines, which has been involved in three other major shipping disasters in the past 21 years.

In 1987, the Sulpicio-owned Dona Paz ferry collided with an oil tanker, killing more than 4,000 people in the world's worst peacetime sea tragedy.