Parents searching for missing children examined a row of bodies while other survivors dried belongings on roadsides a day after a typhoon killed nearly 300 people in the southern Philippines.
Officials fear more bodies may be found as rescuers reach hard-hit areas that were isolated by landslides, floods and downed communications lines. At least 151 people died in the worst-hit province, Compostela Valley, when typhoon Bopha hit on Tuesday. The victims included 78 villagers and soldiers who died in a flash flood that swamped two emergency shelters and a military camp.
Disaster response agencies reported 284 dead in the region and 14 fatalities elsewhere from the typhoon, one of the strongest to hit the country this year.
In New Bataan, a town of 45,000 people, 319 remained missing, said the interior secretary, Mar Roxas, on a visit to survey the damage.
"These were whole families among the registered missing," Roxas told the ABS-CBN TV network. "Entire families may have been washed away."
Bodies of victims were laid on the ground for viewing by people searching for missing relatives. A father wept when he found the body of his child after lifting a plastic cover. A mother went away in tears, unable to find her missing children. "I have three children," she said repeatedly, flashing three fingers before a TV cameraman.
Two men carried the mud-caked body of an unidentified girl that was covered with coconut leaves on a makeshift stretcher made from a blanket and wooden poles.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies issued an urgent appeal for $4.8m to help people directly affected by the typhoon. The deaths came despite government efforts to force residents out of high-risk communities as the typhoon approached.
On Wednesday evening the typhoon was over the South China Sea west of Palawan province. It was blowing northwestward and could be headed to Vietnam or southern China, according to government forecasters.
Thursday 6 December 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/05/typhoon-botha-survivors-philippines
0 comments:
Post a Comment