A steal-hull ferry carrying 88 passengers and crew on board sank at Batangas passage, south of Luzon island, around mid-night Saturday. Fifty-three people were rescued but 35 others remain missing, the coast guard authority reported Sunday.

The M/V Baleno-9, en route to Batangas port from Calapan city, was reported listed before sinking at around 10:07 p.m. Saturday local time (1407 GMT) when it was passing the narrow Batangas channel separating Mindoro island with the Luzon island, the country's coast guard said.

The coast guard said it was alerted shortly after the ferry's sinking and dispatched two rescue vessels and two aircrafts to the scene. Three passing ferries also joined the rescue operation.

Coast guard initial inquiry quoted survivors as saying that the vessel took in water coming from the bow ramp and was severely tilted and eventually sank. The cause of the accident is being investigated.

It was the second sea accidents during the Christmas holiday. A wooden-hull motor ferry sank after ramming into a fishing ship at the mouth of Manila bay on Thursday, leaving 3 dead and 24 missing.

Sea accident is common in the Philippine archipelago where low- income families largely rely on boats to transport from one island to another. But bad weather, poor maintenance, lax enforcement of safety measures resulted in a series of deadly accidents. In 2008, a giant passenger ship capsized at the height of a typhoon in central Philippines, killing more than 700 people.