At least 54 people who remained missing from two back-to-back passenger ferry sinkings in the Philippines over the Christmas holidays were feared dead Monday as rescuers found no signs of life at the accident sites, dpa reported.
Twenty-four people were still missing from the passenger ferry MV Catalyn, which sank on Christmas Eve after ramming into a fishing boat off Limbones Island in Cavite province, just outside Manila.
At least 30 others were also reported missing when the passenger ferry MV Baleno 9 sank late Saturday off Batangas City, 85 kilometres south of Manila.
Coast guard chief Admiral Wilfredo Tamayo said navy and coast guard vessels as well as volunteers and fishermen have continued to comb the seas in a bid to retrieve more bodies from the ill-fated ships.
Tamayo said coast guard divers have reached the wreckage of the Catalyn 67 metres below the surface and spotted at least 12 bodies trapped inside the ferry.
"The trapped bodies inside the said vessel have not yet been recovered," he said.
Tamayo said efforts to recover bodies of the missing from the Baleno have remained fruitless.
Authorities were having a hard time determining the total number of missing from the Baleno because a number of the people aboard the ship were not listed in the manifest, which only declares 74 passengers and 14 crew members.
Authorities confirmed three people were killed in the sinking of the Catalyn, while six were confirmed dead after the Baleno went down.
Maritime authorities were expected to start investigations into the two accidents after the holidays. The operations of both shipping lines that owned the ill-fated vessels have been suspended.
Sea travel is a major mode of transportation in the Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands. Accidents are frequent due to bad weather, poorly maintained boats, overcrowding and weak enforcement of safety regulations.
In June 2008, more than 800 people drowned when a passenger ferry sank off the central Philippines at the height of Typhoon Fenghsen.
The country was the site of the world's worst peacetime shipping disaster in 1987 when more than 4,000 people perished in a collision between the ferry Dona Paz and an oil tanker before Christmas Day.