Red Cross appeals for aid after Philippines landslide

A rain-soaked mountainside disintegrated in an unstoppable wall of mud today, burying hundreds of houses and a school in the eastern Philippines. Red Cross officials estimated 200 people were dead and 1,500 others missing.

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