A cargo ship sank in stormy, shark-infested waters in the southwestern Philippines, leaving 14 crew missing, the coast guard said Tuesday. Four crewmen from the Mia were rescued Sunday by a passing fishing vessel, two days after their ship sank off the Tubbataha Reef, near the southwestern province of Palawan with 18 crew onboard, said Julius Ave of the coast guard station in the provincial capital of Puerto Princesa. The survivors said they were among 11 of the Mia's crew who decided to tie themselves together with a rope, believing they would have a better chance of surviving. But they unhitched themselves from the rope after one of them was attacked by a shark, said Fermin Soto, a radio operator in Manila of Irma Shipping and Trading Inc., owner of the rescuing vessel, Alice Third. He said four survivors were taken to a hospital on Cuyo island, between Palawan and Panay in the central Philippines. The 426-ton Mia was carrying cement from central Cebu province to Brooke's Point township in Palawan when it ran into strong winds and big waves churned up by a tropical depression that lashed the northern Philippines over the weekend, the Associated Press quoted coast guard as saying. Soto said three of the four survivors were wearing life vests.
