A ferry with more than 350 people onboard sank early Monday in choppy seas off the southern Philippines, killing at least 18 and leaving 24 still missing, the coast guard said.

The MV Trisha Kerstin 3 issued a distress signal around 1:50am (10:50pm PKT 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 went down 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.

At least 317 people have so far been rescued, according to the most recent tally by the Philippine Coast Guard, with 18 confirmed dead and 24 still unaccounted for amid an ongoing search-and-rescue operation.

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 ferry went down about five kilometres 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,” Philippine Coast Guard spokeswoman Noemie Cayabyab said in a televised interview.

Short-staffed rescuers

Basilan emergency responder Ronalyn Perez told AFP 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. “As of now, we are focused on the rescue.”

Survivors were being brought to the coast guard stations in Zamboanga and Isabela City, he added.

In its 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 they were “working tirelessly” in close coordination with the coast guard.

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.