At least seven people have died and scores plucked to safety in the Philippines on Monday after a fire ripped through a ferry carrying more than 130 people and forced passengers and crewmembers to jump overboard, the coast guard and witnesses said.
The blaze broke out on the Mercraft 2 at around 6:30 a.m. (10:30 p.m. GMT Sunday) as it carried 134 passengers and crew from Polillo Island to Real in Quezon province on the main island of Luzon.
Seven people died and 127 were rescued, Philippine Coast Guard spokesperson Commodore Armando Balilo said after the last missing were found.
Many of the passengers and crew were forced to jump into the water and were plucked from the sea by vessels in the area, coast guard officials said.
The fire apparently started from the engine room, the officials said. It was brought under control and the wreckage towed to shore in Real.
The fiberglass fast craft boat, which had a 186-person capacity, was about a kilometer from Real when it caught fire. Twenty-four people were injured and brought to a hospital after the fire engulfed the M/V Mercraft 2 while it was approaching a seaport in Real town in Quezon province from Polillo Island.
"We were able to rescue 40 survivors," said Capt. Brunette Azagra, whose passenger vessel was 500 meters (1,640 feet) from the Mercraft when the fire broke out. Two bodies were also pulled from the water, he added.
"They were lucky, because we also came from Polillo. They overtook us, but we were just nearby," Azagra told a local radio station, describing sea conditions as "quite good."
Sea accidents are common in the Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands, because of frequent storms, badly maintained boats, overcrowding and weak enforcement of safety regulations. In December 1987, the ferry Dona Paz sank after colliding with a fuel tanker, killing more than 4,300 people in the world’s worst peacetime maritime disaster.
