COTABATO CITY — Four excursionists, including two children, drowned after a pump boat carrying them and 10 others capsized in the sea near Barangay Cabgan in Tambulig, Zamboanga del Sur on Saturday.
The Tambulig Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office and police officials in the municipality and in the Zamboanga Del Sur Provincial Police Office on Monday confirmed the incident left two women, a preschooler and an elementary pupil dead.
Local executives had told reporters that the victims were from Barangay Balas in Aurora, Zamboanga del Sur, out for an excursion, when the apparently overloaded pump boat carrying them was overturned by big waves caused by sudden strong winds.
Barangay officials, fishermen and a team from the Tambulig police force found late Saturday three of the four pump boat passengers who were swept away by waves.
The two women were declared dead on arrival at a hospital where emergency responders rushed them for treatment. The third victim, an elementary pupil, died in the hospital later, according to barangay officials in Cabgan and personnel of the Tambulig Municipal Police Station.
The fourth missing boat passenger was found early Sunday floating lifeless near an offshore fish cage not too distant from the scene of the sea mishap. — John Felix M. Unson
