At least 200 people have been killed in the southern Philippines after a tropical storm battered the archipelago nation’s second-largest island, triggering heavy flooding and landslides that have ravaged towns and displaced tens of thousands.
Tropical Storm Tembin on Friday lashed Mindanao island, home to 20 million people, with gusts of 125kph and torrential rain, wiping out at least one mountain village and prompting a massive rescue operation over the weekend.
Police said 144 people remained missing, while more than 40,000 had fled to evacuation camps as Tembin roared out into the South China Sea early yesterday.
Photo: AFP
A total of 70,000 have been displaced or affected by the storm, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), which said that continued heavy rain could hamper the search for survivors.
“People left everything behind when they fled for their lives,” the IFRC’s Philippines operations and programs manager Patrick Elliott said in a statement.
The Philippines is pummelled by major storms every year, many of them deadly, but Mindanao tends to be less affected.
Footage showed vast tracks of land on the island was under brown water, often waist deep, as locals tried to flee to safer ground.
Local police said 135 people were killed and 72 were missing in the northern section of Mindanao, while 47 were dead and 72 missing in the impoverished Zamboanga Peninsula on its western side.
Another 18 people died in the province of Lanao del Sur in the center of the island.
One of the places hit hardest by the storm was the mountain village of Dalama, which was virtually erased from the map.
Footage filmed by Philippine TV network ABS-CBN showed houses destroyed or engulfed by floodwaters there and rescuers retrieving the body of a dead girl buried in a landslide.
Police, soldiers and volunteers used shovels and their bare hands to dig through mud and debris in their search for survivors.
“The flood was already close and the people were not able to get out from their homes,” Armando Sangcopan, an elderly male survivor, told the station.
A total of 103 houses were carried off by floodwaters in Dalama, rescuers said.
The storm approached the western island of Palawan, a popular tourist draw, late on Saturday and swept into the South China Sea before dawn, the Philippine state weather service said.
“So far zero casualties, but we have accounts of some people missing,” Palawan civil defense chief Zaldy Ablana told DZMM radio in an interview yesterday.
However, in a Palawan fishing village, a 53-year-old man was killed by a crocodile while securing his boat in a river.
Tembin struck less than a week after Tropical Storm Kai-Tak left scores dead and more than 20 missing in the central Philippines, straining the disaster-prone nation’s already stretched resources.
The deadliest typhoon to hit the country is still Haiyan, which killed thousands and destroyed entire towns in heavily populated areas of the central Philippines in November 2013.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in