Hope fades for typhoon victims

Rescuers today gave up hope of finding survivors in villages swamped by mudslides on the slopes of the Mayon volcano, five days after a typhoon killed an estimated 1,000 people.

Official figures showed 450 dead, 507 injured and 599 missing, but Senator Richard Gordon, head of the local Red Cross, said he believed more than 1,000 died in the thousands of homes that were buried under five feet of volcanic debris, mud and flood waters.