At least 110 people were missing as darkness fell on Friday after explosions and fire tore through a Philippine ferry, killing one person and sending many into the sea to escape the flames.‘‘We have not given up hope of finding more survivors but there’s also the possibility that some of them were trapped inside the boat,’’ coastguard spokesman Lieutenant Armand Balilo told reporters after at least 766 people were rescued. Fires raged on parts of the stricken ferry for 12 hours and smoke could be seen rising from the ship on Friday evening.Rescuers said they would have to wait for up to two days to let the vessel cool down before they could begin searching for bodies. The 510-foot long ship listed onto its right side after being towed from the mouth of Manila Bay to Bataan island.The coastguard and owners of the Super Ferry 14 disagreed on the number of missing and the number of passengers on board when disaster struck about an hour into the overnight journey from Manila to Bacolod in the central part of this nation of islands. One person has been confirmed dead. The coastguard said of 879 passengers and crew on board, 766 were rescued. It listed 112 people as missing, including two crew members. The shipping firm said of 899 on board, some 788 were rescued. It also listed one dead and 110 missing.The owners disputed the coastguard assessment that the fire started in the engine room, saying it began on an upper deck. Gina Virtusio, a spokeswoman for the WG&A consortium of three shipping lines that owns the vessel, replied to questions about the likelihood of sabotage by saying the owners were ‘‘leaning towards that issue’’. Dozens of fishing boats plucked people from the choppy seas as coastguard, navy and cargo vessels raced through the darkness of Friday morning to the burning ferry. There was no hint the ferry was overloaded — a common cause of maritime disasters in the Philippines — as it had a capacity of 1,126 passengers, according to details on the WG&A website. Maritime accidents are relatively common in the Philippines, a country of more than 7,100 islands linked by networks of ferries. —(Reuters)
