Boat capsizes off Cotabato, 8 rescued

COTABATO CITY, Philippines - Army Special Forces operatives rescued Thursday night eight passengers of a small motorized banca overturned by heavy waves while approaching the city’s western coast from the Moro Gulf.

Col. Dickson Hermoso, spokesman of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said members of the 11th Special Forces Company managed to pull them out one after another from the sea and evacuate them to the city’s Kalanganan shore using their Australian-made airboats.

Most passengers of the ill-fated water craft are employees of the Department of Social Welfare and Development in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, who were on their way to the city via the Tamontaka River.

Hermoso said it was just fortunate that a certain Datu Bong Sumlay, from an office here of the National Commission on Muslim Filipinos, had promptly informed the officials of the 11th SF Company, a component unit of the 5th Special Forces Battalion, about the sea mishap.

The victims were sailing through rough sea, from a field work in the coastal town of Datu Blah Sinsuat in the first district of Maguindanao, en route to Cotabato City.