Typhoon death toll nears 200 in Philippines

PHILIPPINES: The death toll from Typhoon Xangsane in the Philippines rose to 197 on Tuesday, with at least 22 other people still reported missing, rescue workers said.

The industrial belt south of Manila bore the brunt of the storm, with at least 154 people killed in five provinces, the civil defense office and other government agencies said.

The figure included six people who drowned overnight in the hills near the towns of Antipolo and Teresa on the eastern outskirts of Manila and 14 others who drowned near the remote town of San Francisco, southeast of the capital.

Five other people were still reported missing in San Francisco, Nancy Toribio of the social welfare and development office in Quezon province told AFP.

She denied a report by the region's disaster coordinating center that a landslide had occurred in San Francisco, killing three people and leaving 72 others missing.

Elsewhere in the islands, 23 people were killed and 17 others were missing after a bus was swept off a bridge by a swollen river near the town of Igbaras on the central island of Panay, police said.

At least 20 other deaths have been reported by officials in the Bicol region, metropolitan Manila and nearby provinces to the north after Xangsane struck last Thursday. The typhoon, the strongest to hit the Philippines capital in a decade, displaced 1.33 million people and blacked out the country's main island of Luzon, leaving some 43 million people in the dark.

Manila, Tuesday, AFP