Philippines typhoon: picture gallery

Rescuers scouring the seas around the wreck of the Philippine ferry that sank over the weekend with 850 people on board say that just 40 survivors have made it safely to shore.

A total of 28 passengers and crew from the MV Princess of Stars were reported to have been found late yesterday after reaching a coastal village in a lifeboat. Most of the other 12 reported survivors from the sea are believed not to have come from the ferry, but were instead fishermen who were sailing nearby and were hurled from their ships.

Hopes are fading fast for the hundreds still unaccounted for who were travelling on the ferry when it ran ashore and capsized on Saturday night as Typhoon Fengshen struck. No other signs of life have been found inside the 24,000-tonne vessel, which has been probed by navy divers, now that the seas have calmed.

The Princess of Stars ran aground near Sibuyan island en route from Manila to Cebu City. It issued a distress signal on Saturday but during its search for shelter the ship’s engines failed, leaving it at the mercy of the waves. Cecil Chen, a coastguard official, said: "The engine conked out and (with) the vessel dead on the water, no immediate assistance could be rendered. It suffered the consequence of drifting to the shallow portion and was grounded."

The company that runs the ferry, Sulpicio Lines, has spent today under a hail of condemnation from across the country – both for apparently allowing the ship to be overloaded and for putting to sea amid forecasts of a violent typhoon.

It has a long history of shipping disasters, including the sinking of the Dona Paz in 1987 – a disaster whose toll of 4,000 people made it the worst ever shipping catastrophe during peacetime.

Its entire fleet, which represents a vital part of the transport infrastructure between the many islands that make up the Philippines, has been indefinitely banned from sailing by the government. The company admitted, however, that it was still selling tickets.

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the President of the Philippines, used a national radio broadcast to berate coastguards who allowed the Princess of Stars to be put to sea on Friday night despite warnings of an impending typhoon. As she was leaving on a scheduled visit to the US on Saturday, she said from aboard the presidential flight: "I want answers."

On the land, the death toll from the massive typhoon that swept through much of the central part of the Philippine archipelago continued to mount today: officials say that it now stands at 229, though there remain many small towns and villages which have been overrun by floods but not yet reached by rescuers.

Nanette Tansingco, the mayor of one town on Sibuyan island, described massive destruction to homes, roads and infrastructure and appealed for medical supplies and stocks of embalming fluid as fears grew of a rapidly rising body count.

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