Fifteen dead, 28 missing as ferry sinks in the Philippines

Manila - A ferry with more than 350 people onboard sank Monday morning in choppy seas off the southern Philippines, leaving at least 15 dead and 28 still missing, the coast guard said.
The MV Trisha Kerstin 3 issued a distress signal around 1:50 am (1750 GMT Sunday), a bit over four hours after it departed the Port of Zamboanga City on the southwestern tip of Mindanao, the coast guard said in a statement.
At least 316 people have been rescued, Romel Dua, a coast guard commander, told AFP, with 15 confirmed dead and 28 still unaccounted for.
'A coast guard aircraft is also on the way to help with the operation. The Navy and Air Force also sent their assets,' Dua, who is based in southern Mindanao, told AFP.
The 44-metre (144-foot), triple-decker vessel went down about five kilometres east of Baluk-Baluk Island, part of the Basilan province chain of islands off the Zamboanga peninsula.
'Based on the account of some survivors, the waters in the area were rough at the time,' Philippine Coast Guard spokeswoman Noemie Cayabyab said in a televised interview.
Basilan emergency responder Ronalyn Perez told AFP that rescuers were struggling to handle the sudden influx of survivors.
'The challenge really is the number of patients that are coming in. We are short-staffed at the moment,' Perez said in an interview, adding at least 18 had been brought to one local hospital.
'The ferry was sailing from Zamboanga City to Jolo Island when the incident happened,' she added.
Video released by the Philippine Coast Guard showed survivors being plucked from the water and receiving medical attention.
Survivors could be heard shouting for help in the dark in a live video on Facebook.
'We cannot say for now the reason of the sinking, but we were instructed to conduct a marine casualty investigation to determine the cause,' Dua said.
'As of now, we are focused on the rescue.'
Survivors were being brought to the coast guard stations in Zamboanga and Isabela City, he added.
In its statement, the coast guard said the ferry had not been overloaded.
The archipelago nation of 116 million has a long history of disasters involving the inter-island ferries that ply its seas.
Many rely on cheap and poorly regulated boats and ships for transport between the country's more than 7,000 islands, despite regular accidents.
In 2023, more than 30 people were killed when a fire ripped through a ferry in the southern Philippines, while a 2015 capsizing off the western coast of Leyte Island resulted in more than 60 deaths.
In 1987, the Dona Paz ferry collided with an oil tanker in a pre-Christmas accident that claimed more than 4,000 lives. It was the world's worst peacetime disaster at sea.