By Rosemarie Francisco
MANILA (Reuters) - A ferry with more than 700 people sankoff the coast of the central Philippines in winds and highwaves caused by Typhoon Fengshen and at least four people werekilled, local officials said on Sunday.
"I sent a speed boat to check," Nanette Tansingco, a mayorof the coastal town of Romblon province, told local radio.
"They saw the boat upside down with a big hole in thehull."
She said at least four bodies were found and childrens'slippers were scattered on the shoreline.
The MV Princess of Stars stalled in rough seas near Sibuyanisland on Saturday with 626 passengers and 121 crew on board asFengshen, with winds gusting up to 195 kph (121 mph), rippedthrough the Philippines archipelago.
Coast guard vessels were unable to reach the ferry due tohigh waves and winds.
"We were told that at around 5 am the captain sounded theabandon ship signal," said Lieutenant General Pedro Inserto,military commander in the Visayas, the central region of thePhilippines.
A local councillor, Ricardo Aligno, said the bodies of twowomen had been washed ashore. He said on a radio programme thatmore corpses had been found in other villages but high windsand rain made it difficult to reach those communities.
The coast guard was still verifying the reports earlySunday.
The ship, with a gross tonnage of 23,824.17 and totalpassenger capacity of 1,992 people, was enroute to the centralprovince of Cebu from Manila.
Fengshen has already killed at least 17 people in thesouthern Philippines including an 8-year old girl and hergrandfather who were buried in a "trash slide" at a rubbishdump in Cotabato City.
Over 20,000 people were being housed in evacuation centresin the centre and south of the archipelago, where the storm hadtriggered flashfloods, landslides and torn up trees and powerlines.
In Iloilo City, the navy was using rubber boats to rescuesome residents marooned on the roofs of their houses.
The typhoon pelted Manila with torrential rain and highwinds early on Sunday, triggering power outages in many partsof the capital.
Most domestic and international flights were either delayedor cancelled and the airconditioning at Manila's internationalairport was only partly working.
Fengshen, the sixth typhoon to hit the Philippines thisyear, is headed north and expected to hit Taiwan in the nextfew days, according to storm tracker websitewww.tropicalstormrisk.com.
About 20 typhoons hit the Philippines every year,triggering flooding and mass evacuations. Environmental groupsblame illegal logging for making flooding worse, particularlyin the central Philippines, where more than 5,000 people werekilled in 1991 by floodwaters triggered by a typhoon.
(Reporting by Carmel Crimmins; Additional reporting byRosemarie Francisco and Manny Mogato; Editing by Valerie Lee)
