Divers have plucked two more bodies from a sunken passenger ferry and scrambled to plug an oil leak in the wreckage after a collision with a cargo ship.

Divers are combing through a sunken ferry to retrieve the bodies of more than 200 people who are missing after a collision with a cargo vessel near the central Philippine port of Cebu.

Typhoon Saomai, the most powerful storm to hit China in five decades, raged ashore today and churned across the crowded south-east, killing at least two people, wrecking houses and capsizing ships after 1.5 million residents were evacuated.