US helps beef up typhoon relief in Philippines

Sibuyan Island: US soldiers shuttled water, rice and medicine to typhoon-ravaged islands in the central Philippines on Thursday as the search for hundreds of bodies from a capsized ferry continued.

Helicopters from the USS Ronald Reagan, a nuclear-powered US aircraft carrier that cut short a visit to Hong Kong to help relief efforts, transported supplies and scoured the seas around the Princess of the Stars, which went belly up with 865 people on board during Typhoon Fengshen on Saturday.

The overall death toll from the sixth typhoon to hit the Philippines this storm season could top 1,300, while over 1.4 million people have been forced to evacuate their homes and are reliant on handouts to survive.

Rescue efforts have been focused on the Princess of the Stars off central Sibuyan island. US and Philippine navy divers have been combing the seven-storey vessel, where hundreds of corpses are feared trapped.

"They brought 10 bodies up from the first class cabins yesterday. We don't have any identification yet. Some were wearing life vests, some weren't," said Lieutenant Commander Armand Balilo, coast guard spokesman.

Corpses bobbing in the water

Dozens of corpses have been found bobbing in the waters around the central Philippines and have also washed up on beaches but with at least 9 other vessels sunk in Saturday's typhoon, disaster officials are having trouble identifying where they came from.

Retrieval operations from the Princess of the Stars have also been painstaking because of the ferry's position, wedged on a reef, and officials said they were again considering boring a hole in its side to speed things up.

Professional divers from the western island of Coron, famed for its wreck dives, have offered their services in the search.

In the central city of Cebu, where most of the ferry's passengers were from, relatives were waiting for the first bodies to arrive.

Only 48 people were found alive from the disaster and they told harrowing tales of mountainous waves and children rolling around the deck as the vessel started to sink.

Rescuers, meanwhile, are running short of body bags and formaldehyde.

"Right now, what our navy personnel are using to control the smell is gin," said Lieutenant-Colonel Edgard Arevalo, a navy spokesman.

Shipping tragedies are common in the Philippines, where safety rules are poorly implemented and substandard vessels ply dangerous waters.

An inquiry has begun into the Princess of the Stars disaster and the coast guard station commander in Manila has been removed from his post while it proceeds.