MANILA, 20 June 2003 — Four Filipinos were killed after an explosion aboard an oil tanker off the coast of the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday, officials said yesterday.
A report on GMA Network’s “Frontpage” newscast identified the fatalities as: Domingo John Fernandez II, 28; Jovey Mercelino, 26; Jomahenco Morial, 25, and Almie Omac, 31.
The Philippine Embassy in UAE said the bodies of the victims were recovered later yesterday, according to the report.
The blast occurred while “quantities of oil were being transported and unloaded between two tankers seven nautical miles from the UAE coast,” the UAE’s WAM news agency quoted an official source as saying. The petroleum tanker, Efxinos, had “a malfunction at the forward part of the ship (that) caused a spark and immediately resulted in the explosion,” Labor Department spokesperson Nicon Fameronag said in Manila.
Mussa Murad, director of the port of Fujairah, one of the seven members of the UAE federation, said fires aboard the two vessels had been extinguished.
Officials are investigating the incident.
“There was no oil spill. The coastguard examined the site (to check whether there was a spill),” an unnamed UAE official quoted by Agence France-Presse said.
The WAM news agency did not say under which flags the tankers were sailing and did not specify the nationalities of the dead and missing.
