Ferry fire death toll climbs to 76
PUERTO PRINCESA CITY, PALAWAN, Philippines — The death toll from the MV June Aster fire jumped to 76 on Saturday after the Philippine Coast Guard confirmed the discovery of 41 more bodies aboard the burnt-out vessel.
Authorities said the biggest challenge remains the retrieval of the cadavers from the ferry.
The 41 bodies recovered from the wreckage on Saturday were brought to Borac Port in Coron on Sunday for forensic examination and identification.
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They were in addition to the 30 bodies recovered a day earlier and the five remains retrieved shortly after the fire, bringing the total number of recovered bodies to 76.
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Lt. Col. Richard Allan Mangalip, commander of the Philippine National Police Regional Forensic Unit Mimaropa, said forensic teams had begun collecting specimen samples from the remains for DNA testing and comparison with samples from relatives to help establish the victims’ identities.
READ: Grim task begins as authorities identify ferry fire victims
“The main challenge for today is the retrieval of all the cadavers because of the numbers. We do not know how many cadavers are still yet to be recovered,” Mangalip said in a press conference on Sunday.
He said some victims were found close to one another, appearing to have been embracing, while others were scattered in different areas of the vessel.
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Did not board
The vessel was about 2.2 kilometers (1.2 nautical miles) off Barangay Marcilla when an explosion in the cargo hold triggered a fire that rapidly swept through the ship.
Of the 134 people initially listed on the manifest, authorities have accounted for 43 survivors, while 13 remain missing.
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Survivors described scenes of panic, thick smoke and blocked passageways as they scrambled to escape the burning vessel.
Verification checks showed that two ticketed passengers had not actually boarded the vessel. —With a report from Agence France-Presse
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