A wooden-hulled ferry and a fishing boat capsized off a pier at the port city of Ormoc on Leyte island in heavy seas caused by Tropical Storm Roke, the civil defense office and coast guard said.

Twenty-five passengers were rescued from the ferry but three drowned and eight were missing, they said. Eleven people were rescued from the fishing boat and five were missing.

Falling trees crushed to death a 72-year-old woman on Bantayan island and a five year-old girl on Cebu island, both west of Leyte.

Dozens of inter-island ferries were confined to port across the central islands because of the storm, leaving more than 3,000 passengers stranded.

Roke's peak winds had weakened to 85 kilometers (53 miles) per hour by noon from about 105 kilometers per hour earlier Thursday.

The eye of the storm was in the north of the Sulu Sea about 100 kilometers southeast of Coron island at 4:00 pm (0800 GMT) and was moving west at 30 kilometers an hour, the weather bureau said.

It should exit into the South China Sea early Friday, they said.

The bureau said storms in the middle of the Philippine dry season were rare, occurring only about once every three years.

Most of the country's average annual 19 storms and typhoons blow in from the Pacific Ocean in the wet season between June and October.

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