A COUPLE and their two children, ages 5 and 2, were found dead in Sibonga, Cebu, in what police believed to be a case of arson with robbery and multiple homicide.

Responding policemen found around 11 p.m. last Saturday the charred remains of Swedish national Alf Melker Viksten, 60, his Cebuana wife Maria Serenita, 35, and their two children -– Serena Alfeda, 5, and Johannes Alf, 2, in different areas of the victims’ two-story house.

Senior Insp. Noli A. Cernio, Sibonga police station chief, personally handled the investigation into the incident.

He said they recovered a kerosene gas container, 13 shells of caliber .22, and an open cash box with gold coins inside.

He said these were all submitted to the Philippine National Police Crime Laboratory 7 for examination.

Cernio, however, could not yet determine all the valuables that may have been taken by the perpetrators because they do not know of anyone whom to ask.

A housemaid would have helped them identify what valuables inside the house were lost, but the victims do not have one.

The Vikstens’ house in Sitio Catap, Barangay Banlot, Sibonga was also located far from neighbors.

Cernio believed the victims were likely shot to death first before their bodies were torched, as indicated by the presence of empty shells and a kerosene gas container.
Alf Melker’s body was found in the garage, some 20 meters away from the house.

Maria Serenita’s body was recovered in the first floor, while the children were found near each other at the second floor.

The victims’ remains were taken to the Tupas Funeral Homes in neighboring Carcar City for autopsy.

Cernio said the house was still intact and not damaged by fire.

Authorities, who are looking into robbery as a possible motive for the crime, are now tracking down some personalities who may be behind the killing.

Cernio said Alf Melker is a pensioner, being a Sweden military force retired member.

The Vikstens, he said, were into the lending business, and were known to be good-natured folks.

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Hopes faded on Monday that more survivors would be found in what could be one of the Philippines’s worst sea tragedies as rescuers failed to find signs of life inside a capsized ferry that had held more than 800 passengers and crew members when a typhoon struck on Saturday.

Survivors of the ferry at Quezon Memorial Hospital in Lucena, Philippines, on Monday

Rescue officials said only 38 survivors had been rescued, including 28 passengers and crew members who came ashore Monday after drifting at sea since Saturday.

A total of 13 bodies believed to be from the ferry, Princess of the Stars, have been recovered, including nine that washed up on land on Monday.

The known dead from the ferry brought the death toll from the typhoon, named Fengshen, to at least 176, the Philippine National Red Cross said. Fengshen, packing winds of up to 121 miles per hour , struck the central and northern Philippines on Saturday, knocking down power lines, causing landslides, flooding rivers, and inundating entire communities.

Divers who beat against the hull of ferry on Monday in search of survivors heard nothing that indicated life.

“We just approached the hull of the ship, we got near and then banged, knocked in order for us to give a sign if ever there are still people inside,” Lieut. Col. Edgard Arevalo of the Coast Guard said Monday. “Unfortunately there was no response.”

The Philippine government has asked other countries, particularly the United States, for help in the recovery operations. A United States Navy ship from Okinawa, Japan, was expected to arrive early Tuesday near Sibuyan island, south of Manila, where the ferry sank, said Jesus Dureza, press secretary of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

Officials said helicopters on the Navy ship could help survey the general area for possible survivors.

Eleandro Madrona, a congressman of Romblon Province where the ferry sank, flew over the area on Monday afternoon, but reported seeing only a tugboat near the ship’s wreckage.

“I was thinking, where could these 700 people be?” Mr. Madrona said, according to The Associated Press.

Elsewhere, officials tried to assess the losses from the typhoon. Iloilo, a central Philippine province, was the worst hit, with fatalities approaching 100 as of Monday, officials said. It was too early to determine damage to agriculture and infrastructure, but officials said it could run up to billions of pesos.

Another concern was the welfare of the nearly 70,000 people across the country who were displaced by the typhoon and are now living in evacuation centers. On Sunday, Ms. Arroyo ordered all government agencies to help in the relief operations, while private companies have begun campaigns to collect donations of food, clothing and bottled water.

The president also ordered tighter maritime regulations. “Pending a review of Philippine Coast Guard protocols, no vessel sails if it would pass a possible typhoon path,” Ms. Arroyo, who is on a state visit in the United States, said in a video conference with her advisers on Monday.

The government has suspended the operation of all vessels of Sulpicio Lines, which owns the 24,000-ton ferry, which was capable of carrying 1,992 people.

Distraught relatives of the ferry’s passengers have trooped to the Manila office of Sulpicio Lines since Sunday, many of them blaming the company for the disaster. An advocacy group for crime victims, Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption, announced Monday that it was filing a class action suit against the company.

Officials of Sulpicio Lines, however, said that they tried to set in motion a rescue operation as soon as they learned that the ship had encountered problems. But “severe weather condition delayed the rescue efforts both from the sea and on air,” Carlos Go, the company’s chief executive officer, said in a statement on Monday.

“Our company also assures the families of all unfortunate passengers who perished in this incident that they will be properly compensated,“ Mr. Go added.

Coast Guard officials told reporters Monday that they cleared the ferry to leave Manila for Cebu, a city in the central Philippines, on Friday night because the initial forecast for Fengshen showed it would only hit the eastern part of the country, away from the ferry’s path.

But according to the government’s weather bureau, the typhoon changed direction on Saturday, moving toward the center of the country, running right into the ferry’s path.

Coast Guard officials said they advised the ferry to seek shelter, but that the boat’s engine failed after being battered by the strong winds and waves, thus leaving it even more vulnerable to the intensifying storm.

In a television interview, Senator Richard Gordon, who is also the chairman of the Philippine National Red Cross, quoted a survivor as he described what happened next. According to the survivor, “It was high noon but it was so dark, and there was too much rain and the waves were just too much for the ship,” Mr. Gordon said.

Sulpicio Lines is one of the country’s largest shipping companies, with 22 ships, both freight and passenger, plying the major routes of the Philippine archipelago.

Its ships and ferries have figured in many of the worst maritime disasters in the Philippines. In December 1987, an overloaded Doña Paz collided with an oil tanker off Mindoro Island, killing more than 4,300 people.

A year later, in October 1988, another Sulpicio Lines ship, Doña Marilyn, sank near Leyte province, killing 300 passengers and crew. In 1998, 200 died when the Princess of the Orient, also a Sulpicio liner, capsized near Manila during a storm.

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More survivors have been reported from the passenger ferry which sank during a typhoon in the Philippines, however more than 800 people who were onboard the vessel are still missing.

Philippines President Gloria Arroyo has given Coast Guard officials a dressing down for allowing the ship to sail during a typhoon.

Coast Guard officials insist there was no negligence on their part, nor was there any violation of maritime regulations, following the capsizing of the ship MV Princess of the Stars.

They say the ship was stalled at sea because of engine trouble and was caught in rough seas brought by Typhoon Fengshen.

President Arroyo criticised Coast Guard officials in a teleconference call while on a state visit in the United States.

Relatives of the missing are demanding an investigation, saying ferry operators must have known the typhoon was coming.

All the other vessels of the passenger shipping line have been grounded pending investigation.

After drifting at sea for more than 24 hours in a rubber boat, 28 survivors made it to shore at a small coastal village, local radio station DZBB is reporting.

Two others originally on board the life raft drowned in large swells.

The discovery raises the number of survivors to 32.

Four people were confirmed dead on Sunday.

Coast Guard boats battling winds and high waves are scouring the area around the 23,824 gross tonne ferry and divers were expected to enter the vessel later today.

A helicopter and plane are also en route.

“We are checking whether there were people trapped inside the ferry,” Vice Admiral Wilfredo Tamayo, the head of the Coast Guard, said.

“We might have to drill holes so our divers can access it.”

Typhoon Fengshen, with maximum gusts of 195 kilometres per hour, has killed at least 155 people in central and southern Philippines, with the western Visayas region, famed for its sandy beaches and sugar plantations, the worst affected.

It pounded the archipelago, damaging thousands of houses and displacing tens of thousands of people.

“We got hit real bad this time,” Richard Gordon, the chairman of the Philippines’ Red Cross said.

The typhoon is currently over the South China Sea and is expected to lurch northwards towards Taiwan in the next few days according to weather reports.

Pandemonium

In the central city of Cebu, where Princess of Stars was meant to dock, dozens of relatives waited into the morning for news.

“The last time I heard from my son was on Friday evening when the ship left Manila. He texted to say he was coming home,” Celecia Tudtud, a mother of four said.

“I really hope he’s okay,” she said, wiping away tears.

Sulpicio Lines, the ship’s owner, revised the number of people on the vessel late on Sunday (local time) to 845 from an initial estimate of 740 plus.

At least 20 children and 33 infants were on board.

The few who made it out alive spoke of pandemonium when the ship suddenly lurched onto its side.

“What I just did was to float in the water,” a survivor identified only as Jesse told local radio, adding that he had a life vest.

“There were others who rode in the life craft. But it was no use, the waves were big so they capsized also.”

Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who is in the United States for a state visit, held a video conference with disaster officials early on Monday and said coast guard protocols should be reviewed to prevent another ship sailing into a typhoon’s path.

In Iloilo province, 101 people have been reported dead after flood waters over two metres high engulfed communities, forcing tens of thousands to scramble onto the roofs of their homes.

In neighbouring Capiz, more than 2,000 houses have been destroyed in the provincial capital and officials are struggling to make contact with communities further afield.

More than 30,000 people are being housed in evacuation centres in the centre and south of the archipelago.

An archipelago of more than 7,000 islands, the Philippines is hit by an average of 20 typhoons a year.

- ABC/Reuters

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