ZAMBOANGA CITY, 20 September 2005 — A fire broke out on a ferry carrying more than 500 passengers while on its way to the central Philippine island province of Cebu, officials said yesterday.
Officials said the vessel M/V Our Lady of Fatima left the port of Ozamiz City in the southern Philippine and was en route to Cebu when the engine room caught fire before midnight Sunday.
“The fire was later put under control by the crew and there were no reports of casualties or injuries. We expect the ferry to arrive in Cebu this afternoon,” a coast guard spokesman Armand Balilo told Arab News.
Authorities are still investigating the incident, but officials ruled out terrorism as the cause of the fire. Balilo did not know the extent of the damage of the ferry, but said all 552 passengers were safe.
Last month, a bomb explosion, blamed by authorities to the Al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group, ripped through the ferry M/V Dona Ramona docked in the southern island of Basilan, killing three people and wounding more than three dozens more.
The Abu Sayyaf was also tagged in two more bombings in Zamboanga City in July that left 26 civilians wounded. Last year, the group also claimed responsibility for the firebombing of the vessel Super Ferry off Manila Bay, killing several passengers and wounding over 200 people.
The United States listed the Abu Sayyaf as a foreign terrorist organization and froze it assets abroad.
Washington also offered as much as $5 million bounty for the capture of known Abu Sayyaf leaders, including its chieftain Khadaffy Janjalani for the killing of two kidnapped US citizens in 2002 in the southern Philippines.
