A ferry carrying 189 passengers and crew capsized off the Central Philippine in heavy waves on Thursday killing at least 36 people, the coast guard and police said, with at least 118 survivors. Police said there were 173 passengers and 16 crew on board.
Huge waves battered the MBCA Kim-Nirvana, bound for Camotes island in central Cebu province from the port of Ormoc, the cost guard said. Rescuers are in the waters off Ormoc city on Leyte Island looking for 19 people still missing.
Coast guard spokesman Armand Balilo in the capital, Manila, says 118 have been rescued so far. Balilo says the ferry, MB Kim Nirvana, had just left Ormoc for Camotes Islands, about 44 kilometers (27 miles) to the south, when it was hit by big waves.
The bow of the ferry suddenly rose from the waters before the vessel flipped over on one side and began to sink near the port of Ormoc.
Scores, sometimes hundreds, of people die each year in ferry accidents in the Philippines, an archipelago of 7,100 islands with a poor record for maritime safety. Overcrowding is common, and many of the vessels are in bad condition
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