1 dead, 10 crew members missing after cargo ship smashes into small fishing boat in Manila Bay

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MANILA, Philippines–A cargo ship slammed into a small fishing boat in Manila Bay, causing the fishing boat to sink and leaving one of its 23 crew members dead and 10 others missing, Philippine authorities said Thursday.

The incident occurred late Wednesday off Cavite province, south of Manila, said coast guard spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Armand Balilo.

Searchers recovered the body of one member of the fishing boat’s crew, Balilo said. Ten crew members were missing, while the other 12 were rescued by another fishing vessel.

Cavite Gov. Jonvic Remulla told ANC Television that the 15-meter (45-foot) -long wooden-hulled fishing boat sank immediately after being hit.

Balilo said the cargo ship was still unidentified, but that the coast guard would check harbour records to determine which ships were in the area at the time. The cargo ship was carrying steel containers, according to rescued crew members from the fishing boat.

There have been several deadly collisions in the bay’s busy shipping lanes over the past decade, including one between a ferry and a fishing vessel on Christmas Eve in 2009 that killed at least three people and left 24 missing. In May 2003, a collision between a wooden boat and a much larger steel-hulled ferry killed 46 people.

The Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands, was the site of the world’s worst peacetime maritime disaster when a ferry sank after colliding with a fuel tanker in 1987, killing 4,340 people.