Days after Typhoon Mangkhut dozens of people believed buried in a landslide which also left a trail of destruction in Hong Kong and saw millions evacuated in southern China.
Rescue workers said previously that up to 50 people, including children, were believed trapped in the wreckage. A report said at least 43 bodies have since been recovered, potentially doubling the country’s death toll from the storm.
Mangkhut has killed 65 people since it tore through the Philippines. The storm killed another four people in China, where Mangkhut weakened to a tropical storm as it churned inland Monday.
Police and soldiers were among the hundreds of rescuers with shovels and picks searching for the missing along a mountainside as grief-stricken relatives waited nearby, many of them praying quietly.
Itogon Mayor Victorio Palangdan said the victims were miners and their families who had taken shelter inside a former miner’s bunkhouse that was converted into a chapel. At least 40 people are believed to among the missing and presumed dead.
Emergency officials are unable to bring heavy equipment into Itogon as the landslides left the roads into the town impassible, forcing rescuers to dig through the rubble with only shovels and their bare hands.
Authorities said they believed many of those buried in the landslide were gold miners who’d been working illegally at a mine formerly operated by Benguet Corp., a Philippine mining firm.
“Before Ompong came, I asked them to leave,” Palangdan told the Times of the miners, using the local name for Typhoon Mangkhut.
> Shatabdi Sarker Poushi
