Visayan Sea News

At least 56 people, many of them children, drowned and scores are feared missing after an overcrowded boat capsized off Jolo island in the southern Philippines, officials said last Thursday. About 70 survived, many rescued by fishermen, while one man swam two miles to shore after the ML Annahada capsized on Wednesday night, the coastguard said. Twenty-seven children, aged from three months to nine years, were among the dead. The vessel, locally called a motor launch, was authorized to carry only cargo, and capsized after picking up passengers at sea, said coastguard operations officer Lieutenant Roy Echeverria. After it left Jolo, "several boats carrying people pursued it in the open sea and they boarded the launch, which was illegal and unauthorized," Echeverria said.

Rescuers continued their search for passengers of the Philippine ship MV Asia South Korea last week, after it sank in the Visayan Sea before dawn on Dec. 23, officials said. The death toll from the disaster in the central Philippines had risen to 41, they said. The National Disaster Coordinating Council said officials were still verifying the number of survivors, which was most recently reported to be 711. The 27-year-old ship, owned by Cebu-based Trans-Asia Shipping, sank in rough seas off Bantayan Island, 300 miles southeast of Manila, while on a 12-hour voyage from the central Philippine city of Cebu to the island of Iloilo. Survivors said they heard an explosion before the vessel went down in rough seas.…