07 September,2009 10:03 AM IST | | Agencies
A Panama-registered cargo vessel with 20 South Korean and Filipino crew members on board sank off the eastern Philippines as the death toll in the sinking of a domestic passenger ferry rose to nine, the coast guard said on Monday.
All four South Korean and 15 Filipino crew members of the MV Hera were rescued on Monday off Eastern Samar province, 660 km south of Manila, coast guard spokesman Lieutenant Armand Balilo said.
"They are all in a lifeboat which is being towed by a fishing boat," he said.
The Hera, which was carrying logs, was on its way to China from Papua New Guinea when it experienced engine trouble and began to take on water late Sunday as it passed by the Philippines, a coast guard report said.
The accident followed Sunday's sinking of the Superferry 9, which was carrying 847 passengers, 117 crew members and four sea marshals, off Siocon town in Zamboanga del Norte province, 810 km south of Manila.
Coast guard chief Admiral Wilfredo Tamayo said nine fatalities had been confirmed in the Superferry 9 accident while 957 people were rescued.
"Based on the manifest of the ship, only two persons are unaccounted for," he said. "We are continuing to search for the two missing."
The Superferry 9 sank after listing for several hours.
Tamayo said an investigation would be conducted to determine the cause of the accident, but initial reports said the ship had problems with its generator.
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 Typhon Fengshen, drowning more than 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.
