1,000 feared dead in Philippines typhoons

More than 160,000 people fled to high ground or crowded into schools and town halls as yet another powerful typhoon battered the eastern Philippines today, where 1,000 are dead or missing from an earlier storm.

Mudslides and flash floods have turned entire provinces facing the Pacific Ocean into a sea of chocolate-brown mud littered with bodies, uprooted trees, collapsed homes and bridges.

The military has listed 479 dead and 560 missing in three towns in Quezon province.

Survivors sifted through piles of mud, which in some towns was ankle deep, for clothes and belongings. Soldiers, police and medical workers trekked with relief supplies across flood-ravaged roads and bare mountains to reach towns cut off by landslides.

In Infanta town in Quezon province, east of Manila, where more than 100 died, officials allowed residents to briefly leave evacuation centres to retrieve belongings from damaged homes, but warned them to return because of the typhoon.

“We are not concerned so much about saving property. We just want to save lives,” said town mayor Filipina America.

Typhoon Nanmadol made land along the north-east coast today with sustained winds of 115mph with 138mph gusts.

It sliced through the northern half of the main island of Luzon toward the South China Sea.

Schools and government offices were to remain closed on Friday in Manila and the rest of the country, the presidential office announced.