Scores of exhausted residents crowded onto ferries yesterday to escape villages ravaged by flash floods and landslides and to search for food and medicines after back-to-back storms left more than 1,100 people either dead or missing.
At least 566 people were dead and 546 missing in last week's storms, officials said. Hundreds of houses, farms, roads and bridges in the country's northeast were swept away by floods and mud, and damaged infrastructure has hampered rescue efforts and the flow of relief goods to far-flung villages.
Sporadic rain and low clouds early yesterday grounded a Philippine air force rescue fleet, spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Restituto Padilla said.
In Real, one of three worst-hit towns in Quezon province, scores of people scrambled at a pier for a place on a ferry going to Manila. The ferry has a capacity of about 100 passengers, but it was soon overwhelmed by perhaps three times as many. The captain tried in vain to turn back the throng.
Jenny Martirez, who traveled with her husband and one-year-old child, said their house in nearby Infanta town was buried under almost a meter of mud.
"There is nothing there. No food, no water. All you can see is mud everywhere," she said, adding her only hope was to reach Manila.
Meanwhile, medical teams yesterday rushed anti-venom vaccines to one Philippine town ravaged by landslides and flashfloods amid rising incidence of snake bites, an official said.
Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman said local officials have reported that deadly cobras swarmed in General Nakar town in Quezon province, 75km east of Manila.
"The Philippine cobra reared its ugly head because they were disturbed," she said. "People have found that cobras were all over General Nakar."
General Nakar was one of three towns in Quezon badly hit by the recent storms.
Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman appealed to foreign governments for help.
"The appeal we're now making is in rehabilitation," Soliman said on Sunday. "That really means rebuilding water systems, toilets, livelihood in agriculture for people whose farmlands were buried in mud."
US Ambassador Francis Ricciardone, who flew by helicopter on Sunday to flood-stricken Quezon villages, said roads and bridges needed to be repaired immediately to allow relief goods to flow to isolated areas.
"The devastation was worse than I had imagined," Ricciardone said. "It was quite distressing, logs everywhere, mud everywhere, roads were cut off in many places and bridges were down."
Most of the destruction was wrought by a tropical storm that blew through northeastern provinces on Nov. 29, killing at least 529 people and leaving 508 missing. Typhoon Nanmadol struck the same region late on Thursday, leaving 37 dead and 38 missing, according to revised figures by the Office of Civil Defense.
Washington offered to dispatch troops for humanitarian help. On Sunday, two HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters from a nearby US ship delivered food and a team of experts to assess damage. The US also donated US$200,000, 500 body bags and shelter materials to the Philippine Red Cross.
President Gloria Arroyo banned logging in the Philippines after rampant deforestation was blamed for much of the devastation.
Likening illegal loggers to terrorists, drug traffickers and kidnappers, Arroyo called for harsher penalties for anyone convicted of environmental destruction in several eastern provinces.
It is estimated that less than 6 percent of the 21 million hectares of forest that existed a century ago remains intact.
VAGUE: The criteria of the amnesty remain unclear, but it would cover political violence from 1999 to today, and those convicted of murder or drug trafficking would not qualify Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday announced an amnesty bill that could lead to the release of hundreds of prisoners, including opposition leaders, journalists and human rights activists detained for political reasons. The measure had long been sought by the US-backed opposition. It is the latest concession Rodriguez has made since taking the reins of the country on Jan. 3 after the brazen seizure of then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Rodriguez told a gathering of justices, magistrates, ministers, military brass and other government leaders that the ruling party-controlled Venezuelan National Assembly would take up the bill with urgency. Rodriguez also announced the shutdown
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
China executed 11 people linked to Myanmar criminal gangs, including “key members” of telecom scam operations, state media reported yesterday, as Beijing toughens its response to the sprawling, transnational industry. Fraud compounds where scammers lure Internet users into fake romantic relationships and cryptocurrency investments have flourished across Southeast Asia, including in Myanmar. Initially largely targeting Chinese speakers, the criminal groups behind the compounds have expanded operations into multiple languages to steal from victims around the world. Those conducting the scams are sometimes willing con artists, and other times trafficked foreign nationals forced to work. In the past few years, Beijing has stepped up cooperation
Exiled Tibetans began a unique global election yesterday for a government representing a homeland many have never seen, as part of a democratic exercise voters say carries great weight. From red-robed Buddhist monks in the snowy Himalayas, to political exiles in megacities across South Asia, to refugees in Australia, Europe and North America, voting takes place in 27 countries — but not China. “Elections ... show that the struggle for Tibet’s freedom and independence continues from generation to generation,” said candidate Gyaltsen Chokye, 33, who is based in the Indian hill-town of Dharamsala, headquarters of the government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). It
RSS