Philippine ferry search halted till next week

MANILA (Reuters) - The search for hundreds of bodies feared trapped on a capsized passenger in the central Philippines has been postponed until next week while officials try to remove 10 tonnes of toxic pesticide from the vessel.

"We want to target to get the cargo out by Wednesday at the latest. If we can get the job done Monday or Tuesday, so much the better," Elena Bautista, the head of a government taskforce handling the aftermath of the ferry disaster, said on Saturday.

"Once the endosulfan is removed, that's the only time the search operations for survivors and bodies can resume."

MV Princess of the Stars ran aground last Saturday during a typhoon and then overturned in about 15 minutes off Sibuyan island in the central Philippines. The vessel had 865 passengers and crew.

Painstaking efforts by Philippine and U.S. divers to retrieve bodies from the seven-storey ship were abruptly halted on Friday after authorities learned 400 boxes of endosulfan, a highly toxic pesticide, were on board.

Officials said on Saturday that water samples taken from the sea off Sibuyan island showed there had been no contamination but a fishing ban around the area was maintained.

Local communities were relying even more on the sea to survive after Typhoon Fengshen tore up coconut trees and destroyed corn and cassava crops when it hurled through the centre of the country last weekend.

"This is a big tragedy for our seas and we depend on our seas for our livelihood," said Nanette Tansingco, a local mayor. "What will happen to us here?"

The overall death toll from the typhoon could top 1,300, including 540 people killed in a torrent of flooding that tore up trees and bridges, destroyed homes and forced over two million people to evacuate.

Damage to agriculture and infrastructure was pegged at nearly 7 billion pesos ($156 million).

GRIM REMINDER

The discovery of a toxic chemical on board a passenger ferry was a grim reminder of how standards are flouted in the Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands with a woeful record in maritime safety.

It also raises the heat on the ship's owner Sulpicio Lines, already under fire for allowing the vessel to sail when a typhoon had hit.

A company official said on Saturday it was unaware the cargo, which was bound for a Del Monte Philippines' pineapple plantation, was toxic.

"If we knew, we would have made a special arrangement for that kind of shipment," said Jay Tan, a member of Sulpicio Lines' crisis response team.

But Del Monte Philippines Inc. (DMPI) said Sulpicio Lines was fully aware of the nature of the cargo. Del Monte said the boxes of endosulfan were loaded without its knowledge or consent onto a passenger ferry.

"Upon learning that our cargo was loaded in the ill-fated M/V Princess of the Stars, we immediately informed the Fertiliser and Pesticides Authority (FPA)," the company said in a statement.

The FPA told the government taskforce about the cargo on Thursday.

Princess of the Stars' demise is likely to be the Philippines' worst sea accident since the Dona Paz ferry collided with an oil tanker in 1987, killing more than 4,000 people.

Sulpicio Lines also owned the Dona Paz. The company has also been involved in two other major shipping accidents.

So far, only 56 survivors have been found; either plucked from the water by fishermen or washed up on surrounding islands. Only around a dozen bodies have been removed from the ship.

(Reporting by Carmel Crimmins; Additional reporting by Manny Mogato; Editing by David Fox)