MANILA • The death toll from a tropical storm in the southern Philippines climbed swiftly to 133 yesterday as rescuers pulled dozens of bodies from a swollen river, police said.
Tropical Storm Tembin has lashed the nation's second-largest island of Mindanao since Friday, triggering flash floods and mudslides. The Philippines is pummelled by 20 major storms each year on average, many of them deadly. But Mindanao, home to 20 million people, is rarely hit.
Police, soldiers and volunteers used shovels to dig through mud and debris as they searched for bodies in the village of Dalama yesterday. "The river rose and most of the homes were swept away. The village is no longer there," police officer Gerry Parami said in nearby Tubod town.
Rescuers meanwhile retrieved 36 bodies from the Salog River in another nearby town, Sapad, yesterday. The bodies were swept downriver from a flooded town upstream called Salvador, according to Sapad town police chief Rando Salvacion. The authorities in Salvador said they had retrieved 17 other bodies upstream.
Tubod, Salvador and Sapad are in Lanao del Norte, which is one of the provinces hardest hit by Tembin.
"The people received ample warnings. But as we are rarely hit by typhoons, people living near the rivers did not take them seriously," Salvador police chief Wilson Mislores said.
The death toll for Mindanao's Zamboanga peninsula also rose to 28, and police said 81 people were missing after mud and rocks swept down coastal communities in Sibuco and other fishing towns. Landslides had blocked rescue and relief convoys to the impoverished region, officials said yesterday.
Tembin struck less than a week after Tropical Storm Kai-Tak left 54 dead and 24 missing in the central Philippines, straining the disaster-prone nation's resources.
"It is unfortunate that another tropical cyclone... made its presence felt so near Christmas," Mr Harry Roque, President Rodrigo Duterte's spokesman, said in a statement.
Mr Roque vowed continued government aid to the affected communities, but Ms Romina Marasigan, a spokesman for the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, described the situation as "challenging".
The deadliest typhoon to hit the country was Haiyan, which killed thousands and destroyed entire towns in heavily populated areas of the central Philippines in November 2013.
The state weather service said Tembin was expected to hit Balabac, a fishing island of 40,000 people in the western Philippines, late yesterday with gusts of 115km an hour. The storm will move clear of the country by tomorrow, the service added.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS
