MANILA, Philippines (AFP)—A ferry with more than 340 people onboard sank early Monday off the southern Philippines, killing at least 18 and leaving 10 still missing, the coast guard said.

Search-and-rescue efforts were expected to continue through the night, Philippine Coast Guard spokeswoman Noemie Cayabyab told AFP, adding that an earlier tally of passengers had been reduced to 344 as some on the ship’s manifest never boarded.

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.

Video released by the governor of Basilan province showed barefoot survivors being wrapped in blankets and placed on gurneys, while victims of the sinking were carried past in body bags.

The triple-decker vessel sank on nearly the same route where 31 people died in 2023 after a fire aboard the Lady Mary Joy 3 ferry. Both ships were owned by locally based Aleson Shipping Lines.

Sheryl Balondo, a rescuer in Isabela City, one of two municipalities where survivors were being taken, said their office had received more than 100 phone calls from concerned family members.

“There’s a tug in our hearts whenever we pick up a call. Their voices sounded worried,” she said. “What we can only say is that, as of now, we don’t have the final list (of names), because the search and retrieval operation is ongoing.”

The 44-metre (144-foot) ferry went down about five kilometres (three miles) 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,” Cayabyab said in a televised interview.

At least two survivors disputed that account, saying the seas had been calm when the ship capsized.

“I hope they investigate this, because we did not have bad weather. Why did it sink when there was no storm?” asked Jun Guro, a lawyer whose interview was posted by the Isabela City government in Basilan.

Only moments before the ship sank, Kyle Punsalang, a recent graduate of a maritime academy, sent his brother a text he would share on Facebook.

“Our boat is tipping over,” Punsalang said. “Please help.”

– Short-staffed rescuers –

Basilan emergency responder Ronalyn Perez told AFP earlier that rescuers were struggling to handle the 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 that at least 18 had been brought to one local hospital.

Video released by the Philippine Coast Guard showed survivors being plucked from the water and receiving medical attention.

Some 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,” Romel Dua, a coast guard commander from southern Mindanao, told AFP.

In a statement, the coast guard said the ferry had not been overloaded.

“Our thoughts and hearts are with everyone who was on board,” Aleson Shipping Lines said in a statement, adding it was “working tirelessly” in close coordination with the coast guard.

Philippine industry regulator the Maritime Industry Authority said later it had “dispatched an investigation team to determine the probable cause or any factors that may have contributed to the incident”.

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.

A 2015 ferry 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.