Landslide leaves 1,500 missing, feared dead

A RAIN-soaked mountainside disintegrated into a torrent of mud in the eastern Philippines yesterday, swallowing hundreds of houses and an elementary school in sludge three stories high.

At least 23 bodies were recovered, but 1,500 people were missing, feared dead.

The farming village of Guinsaugon on Leyte island, 420 miles south-east of Manila, was virtually wiped out, with only jumbles of corrugated steel sheeting left to show the 2,500-strong community ever existed.