COTABATO-Landslides and flooding killed at least 31 people as heavy rain from an approaching storm lashed the southern Philippines, a disaster official said Friday.
The storm unleashed flash floods carrying uprooted trees, rocks and mud overnight in nine mostly rural towns around Cotabato, a city of 300,000 people on Mindanao island.
Many residents were caught by surprise as floodwaters rose rapidly before dawn, Naguib Sinarimbo, the spokesman and civil defence chief for the regional government, told AFP. Rescuers retrieved 16 bodies from Datu Odin Sinsuat, 10 from Datu Blah Sinsuat and five from Upi town, with at least seven other people missing, he told reporters.
A rescue team was also dispatched to a remote village after relatives reported that a community at the foot of a mountain was buried by mud, he said. “Our fear is that there may be many casualties there, though we hope not,” Sinarimbo said, adding the rescuers have yet to brief him on the progress of the search.
Elsewhere, teams in rubber boats rescued residents from rooftops, Sinarimbo added.
In recent years, flash floods with mud and debris from largely deforested mountainsides have been among the deadliest hazards posed by typhoons on Philippine communities. Mindanao is rarely hit by the 20 or so typhoons that strike the Philippines each year. But those that do tend to be deadlier than those that hit Luzon, the main island.
A long mountain range walls off most of Luzon from the Pacific, where most storms are spawned, helping to absorb the blow, the state weather service said.