MANILA • At least two people were killed and hundreds forced to flee their inundated homes in the Philippines as torrential rain triggered flooding and landslides in the storm-battered archipelago, officials said yesterday.

Huge waves smashed into a coastal village on Lapu-Lapu island in the central province of Cebu on Friday night, wiping out dozens of houses and leaving around 290 people homeless, Mayor Junard Chan said on Facebook.

Photos posted online by the mayor showed piles of wood and bamboo near the few houses still standing after the region was drenched by heavy rain.

Rescuers retrieved the bodies of two elderly women who were killed when a landslide hit an area of Mahaplag town before dawn in the nearby province of Leyte, police officer Racquel Hernandez said.

A boy was also pulled from the rubble of his home and treated for his injuries, Ms Hernandez told Agence France-Presse.

About 1,500 people were forced to leave their homes on the major southern island of Mindanao as flood waters engulfed 13 villages, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said.

Meanwhile, in Fiji, the death toll from Cyclone Yasa rose to four yesterday, with the devastation wreaked by the storm compared to a war zone.

Reconnaissance flights showed entire villages wiped out, and the authorities put the cost of damage at hundreds of millions of dollars.

Aid workers fear the death toll will rise when contact is re-established with outlying areas.

A state of natural disaster has been declared for 30 days as emergency services scramble to provide food and clothing to the worst-affected areas.

The superstorm slammed into Fiji's second-largest island, Vanua Levu, late on Thursday, leaving a trail of destruction and affecting 93,000 people, said the National Disaster Management Office.

Of the 24,000 people who evacuated their homes at the height of the storm, 16,113 are still unable to return.

A Royal New Zealand Air Force reconnaissance flight flew over the area yesterday to assess the scale of the damage, with reports of houses, crops and entire livelihoods wiped out. The storm also damaged schools and caused widespread flooding and landslides.

"We've been receiving pictures of Kia island. We have seen total devastation. It looks like a war zone," Save the Children Fiji chief executive Shairana Ali told AFP.

"Houses have been smashed to pieces and nothing remains. People are really desperate for shelter and desperate for food. There's obviously huge psychological damage."

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE