Rescuers in the Philippines have recovered six more bodies from widespread floods and landslides caused by heavy rains, raising the nationwide death toll to 15, rescuers said Friday.
A landslide buried a number of houses on a village near Bislig city on Mindanao island on Thursday, five days into a near-continuous downpour, said Johnny Pimentel, provincial administrator of Surigao del Sur province.
Two corpses have been unearthed from the mud, he told reporters.
A man and a woman both drowned when two boats capsized off the southern city of Surigao and off the southern island of Dinagat, while the bodies of two men were fished out in separate areas of the Agusan river basin of Mindanao, according to the government's Regional Disaster Coordinating Council here.
The civil defence office in Manila earlier reported six deaths from landslides, floods, storm surges and sea mishaps on the eastern island of Samar, one in the Mindanao city of Cagayan de Oro, and one each on Panay and Catanduanes islands.
Nine other people are missing in Samar and nearby Leyte islands, it said.
The government agency said a cold front on the eastern seaboard of the Southeast Asian archipelago had triggered continuous rains in the seven days to January 13.
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