Over 1000 dead or missing in Philippine floods

PanARMENIAN.Net - More than a thousand people are dead or missing after flash floods that ravaged the southern Philippines, the government said Tuesday, December 20, as cities prepared for mass burials.

According to AFP, some 957 people have been killed and 49 others are missing after tropical storm Washi lashed the southern island of Mindanao and surrounding areas over the weekend, said civil defense chief Benito Ramos.

Washi brought heavy rains that swelled rivers, unleashing flash floods and landslides that struck in the dead of night and swept away shantytowns built near river mouths.

The toll rose sharply as the bodies of people who were swept out to sea were recovered.

"They were underwater for the first three days but now, in their state of decomposition, they are bloated and floating to the surface," Ramos told AFP.

A British national was among those killed by the storm, Britain's Foreign Office said.

President Benigno Aquino flew to Mindanao on Tuesday to survey the devastation by air, coordinate the relief effort, and express his condolences to the victims' relatives, aides said.

Aquino said the impoverished nation of 94 million people was now in a "state of calamity", his spokesman Ricky Carandang told reporters.