Zamboanga City, Philippines - Five people drowned and 63 were missing Sunday when a passenger ferry with 968 people aboard sunk in the southern Philippines, rescue officials said. The Superferry 9 sank hours after it listed to the right by 40 degrees off Siocon town in Zamboanga del Norte province, about 810 kilometres south of Manila. It was carrying 847 passengers, 117 crew and four sea marshals.
The Office of Civil Defence said the ship's listing was "allegedly due to a hole in its hull."
Commandant Real Admiral Wilfredo Tamayo said 900 people were rescued by the coast guard, the navy, local fishing boats and two cargo ships of Aboitiz Transport Systems Corp, which owns the vessel.
Five bodies were also retrieved, he added. The identities had not yet been established, but authorities said they included a man and a child who drowned as some passengers jumped into the water in panic.
"We are still looking for 63 people, and we are continuing our rescue operations," Tamayo said. "We are scouring the shorelines of Zamboanga del Norte."
Navy spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Edgard Arevalo said the Philippine and US air forces also dispatched helicopters to help in the search.
The ferry issued a distress signal before dawn Sunday as it listed dangerously in the waters off Siocon. It left the southern city of General Santos on Saturday en route to the central city of Iloilo when the accident happened.
Jess Supan, Aboitiz vice president for safety and security, said the boat's captain had ordered passengers and crew to abandon ship two hours after the ship started to list.
"The captain declared abandon ship and this is more of a precautionary measure instead of waiting for the vessel to topple over," he said. "Everybody was given their life jackets. There is a very good chance that everyone will be rescued."
The rescued passengers and were transferred to two Aboitiz cargo ships and a navy vessel.
Roger Sinsiron, a passenger on the ferry, told a Manila radio station by telephone that people panicked because they could feel the ship tilting.
"It now feels like the ship is 90 per cent tilted on the side," he said as he waited with about 50 others to be transferred to the cargo ships.
Sinsiron said he was awakened by the sound of crashing cargo as the vessel slanted dangerously.
Sea travel is a major mode of transportation in the Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands.
In June 2008, a passenger ferry sank off the central Philippines at the height of Typhoon Fengshen, drowning over 800 passengers.
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 off the central island of Mindoro just before Christmas.
