Nearly 100 people have died in one of the most destructive storms to lash the Philippines this year with dozens more feared missing after villagers fled in the wrong direction and got buried in a boulder-laden mudslide. Almost two million others were swamped by floods in several provinces, officials said Monday.
At least 53 of 98 people who died — mostly in flooding and landslides — were from Maguindanao province in a Muslim autonomous region, which was swamped by unusually heavy rains set off by Tropical Storm Nalgae. The storm blew out into the South China Sea on Sunday, leaving a trail of destruction in a large swath of the archipelago.
A large contingent of rescuers with bulldozers and backhoes resumed retrieval work in southern Kusiong village in hard-hit Maguindanao, where as many as 80 to 100 people, including entire families, are feared to have been buried by a boulder-laden mudslide or swept away by flash floods that started overnight Thursday, said Naguib Sinarimbo, the interior minister for the Bangsamoro autonomous region run by former separatist guerrillas under a peace pact.
The government’s main disaster-response agency also reported 69 people were injured in the onslaught and at least 63 others remain missing.