PH begins identifying victims from ferry fire as dozens still missing

CORON - Philippine authorities began the painstaking process of identifying victims from a ferry fire on Saturday, a day after responders recovered bodies from the burned-out vessel, raising the death toll to at least 35 and leaving more than 50 people missing.

The bodies were transported to a port in Coron town, where temporary tents were set up for forensic teams to process and identify the victims.

Near the port, some family members anxiously watched as responders in protective suits carried black body bags from a Coast Guard vessel to temporary tents.

One of them was Anelyn Magbanua, 37, whose husband was returning to Coron after visiting their children in Manila when the ferry, which was carrying more than 130 people, caught fire near the end of its more than 20-hour journey.

"I hope he is not among the dead being brought off the ship. I hope he is alive and has only drifted to another island," she said.

"It will be very difficult to accept if he's really gone," she said. "He loved his children very much."

Firefighters entered the ferry for the first time on Friday after extinguishing the blaze more than a day after it broke out, giving authorities access to areas that had been hard to reach because of thick smoke and extreme heat. The Coast Guard said burnt remains were discovered in the ferry's economy accommodation section.

Images released by the Coast Guard showed the scale of the destruction inside the vessel, with rows of steel bed frames twisted by intense heat and blanketed in ash. Some photographs appeared to show skeletal remains among the debris.

Philippine Coast Guard official Geronimo Tuvilla said at a press conference on Saturday that the immediate priority was to identify the victims and determine the cause of the fire.

A statement from the Maritime Industry Authority, citing survivor accounts, said two explosions were heard inside the vessel shortly before the fire broke out.

One survivor interviewed by GMA News recalled seeing a small amount of smoke that turned into a fire and quickly spread through the ferry within seconds.

Questions also remained over the fate of the vessel's captain. Coast Guard spokesperson Commodore Noemie Cayabyab said at the same press conference that she had received information that he was alive, but added that the captain's name was not on the list of 43 confirmed survivors.

The fire is the latest in a string of deadly maritime accidents in the Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,600 islands where millions rely on ferries and small boats to travel between provinces and islands.

-Additional reporting by Jay Ereno and Karen Lema; Editing by Jacqueline Wong/Reuters