Disease risk rise after Philippine typhoon

Flood waters receded in the Philippines yesterday in the wake of a typhoon that killed at least 35 people, but thousands more remained cut off from help, hungry and at risk of disease after a week of severe flooding.

Soldiers buried nearly 100 people killed in landslides in northern Aurora province, as typhoon Nanmadol swept north towards Taiwan.

The typhoon added to the misery of thousands in the northern Philippines made homeless by landslides and floods from other storms this week that have left more than 1,000 dead or missing.

"We need one great heave to deliver the relief supplies, find the missing, rescue the isolated, feed the hungry and shelter the homeless," President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said in a statement on national television.

Logging has been blamed for exacerbating the weather disaster, which has forced more than 200,000 people from their homes. Many were running out of food and clean water and power was cut in some areas.

"Our biggest enemy now is diarrhoea, especially in areas where water and food are contaminated," health secretary Manuel Dayrit told radio. He urged people to bury their dead quickly.

However officials said casualties from the latest storm appeared to be low because people were better prepared after three major storms in two weeks. A remote village was flattened on Monday night by mudslides that carried boulders and logs, but it took soldiers until yesterday to bring relief because roads were cut by floodwaters and slips, said military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Buenaventura Pascual.

"The first troops that reached a mountain village in Dingalan town on Friday morning started burying about 100 bodies they found," he said.