By Romeo Ranoco
SIBUYAN ISLAND, Philippines (Reuters) - Divers found bodiesin lifevests bobbing in airpockets of a giant sunken ferry inthe Philippines on Tuesday, and an official said it would be amiracle if any of the hundreds of missing had survived.
The MV Princess of the Stars had over 860 people on boardwhen it ran aground and capsized in huge swells off the cost ofSibuyan island during a typhoon on Saturday.
There are fears that hundreds more bodies may be trappedwithin the seven-storey vessel after a handful of survivorssaid many people did not make it off in time.
One spoke of children rolling around on the floor as theship tilted.
"They may have been caught wherever they were at theparticular time that the vessel changed its position," saidLieutenant-Colonel Edgard Arevalo, a navy spokesman.
He said divers saw up to 15 bodies in one part of the ship.The ghostly white bodies were floating head up. "When theytried to enter the vessel they saw several corpses floating inthe airpocket," Arevalo said.
Three bloated corpses were cut free from a tangle of cablesand brought to the surface. One, believed to be a crew member,was still clutching his radio.
"It will be a miracle if we find survivors,"Lieutenant-Commander Inocencio Rosario, who led a team ofdivers, said.
Retrieval efforts were hampered by a lack of search lights,the ship's large size and unstable condition.
Officials plan to bore a hole inside the vessel to retrievemore corpses.
Drilling will have to be done cautiously because the ship,which is resting upside down with only the tip of its bow abovewater, is estimated to have around 100,000 litres of bunkerfuel still on board.
A slick of oil had formed around the ship, but localofficials said it did not represent a leak.
So far, 48 people have been found alive out of 865passengers and crew on board and 70 bodies have been counted,the coast guard said.
Decomposing corpses keep washing up on surrounding islands,including 22 on one island, forcing ill-equipped communities toquickly bury them.
The sinking of Princess of the Stars may be thePhilippines' worst maritime disaster since 1987 when the DonaPaz ferry collided with an oil tanker killing more than 4,000people.
Sulpicio Lines, which owns Princess of the Stars, alsoowned Dona Paz.
SHIPPING TRAGEDIES
Sulpicio offered to fly one family member per victim toManila from Cebu, where the ship was meant to dock, to helpidentify recovered bodies.
In the capital, family members also waited anxiously.
"We want to see our relatives, even if they are deadalready," said Rey Gilbuena, who had 18 kin on board.
Shipping tragedies are common in the Philippines, anarchipelago of over 7,000 islands where safety rules are poorlyimplemented and substandard vessels ply dangerous waters.
Families are irate at Sulpicio for proceeding with asailing when Typhoon Fengsen, with gusts of up to 195 kph (120mph), had already hit the archipelago on Friday.
The government has ordered a review of maritime regulationsand suspended Sulpicio's passenger ferry operations.
The company has been involved in three other major shippingdisasters in the past 21 years. It has said Princess of theStars set sail with the permission of the coast guard andbefore Fengshen, which was meant to just hit the east of thecountry, changed direction.
Aside from the ferry disaster, at least 213 people werekilled, largely by drowning, in a torrent of floods in thewestern Visayas region in the centre of the country, the officeof civil defence said.
The sixth typhoon to hit the archipelago caused nearly 1billion pesos (11 million pounds) in damage to infrastructure,and washed away thousands of homes.
The Department of Agriculture said around 3.3 billion pesosworth of crops had been damaged but the destruction would notimpact 2008 rice production.
Fengshen, which has weakened to a tropical storm, wasexpected to bring more rain to already flood-ravaged southernand eastern China as it makes landfall near Shantou inGuangdong province on Wednesday, according to the tropicalstorm monitoring website Tropical Storm Risk(http://tsr.mssl.ucl.ac.uk).
Authorities in the coastal province of Guangdong haveordered local governments to prepare disaster relief work.
(Additional reporting by Manny Mogato in Cebu and RosemarieFrancisco and Karen Lema in Manila; Writing by Carmel Crimmins;Editing by Jeremy Laurence and Sanjeev Miglani)
