Manila: Five miners and two women were killed today in separate landslides in the southern Philippines, which has been hit by days of continuous rain, disaster relief officials said.

Rescuers recovered the bodies of five gold panners who were pinned under boulders and soil that plummeted down a mountain onto their makeshift hut in Surigao del Norte province s mining town of Placer, said Blanchie Gobenciong, regional director of the Office of Civil Defence.

Tata Kumon, a social welfare officer in Placer, said two miners who managed to flee to safety and tried to warn the others but that they failed to make it out of the hut fast enough. Gobenciong said it has been raining in the area since last week, with almost nonstop rains since Saturday. Placer lies 740 kilometres southeast of Manila.
In Surigao City in the same province, another landslide buried six houses, killing two women and injuring at least two other people, Gobenciong said.

Nearly 3,000 people have also been affected by floods in Iligan and Surigao cities and Misamis Oriental province, also in the south. More than 300 had to be evacuated, civil defence officials said. Public storm warnings were raise in several provinces in the central and southern Philippines as a tropical storm, packing 65 kilometres per hour winds and gusts of upto 80 kph, crossed near Cebu island in the central Philippines today, the weather bureau said.

The storm is moving northwest at 13 kph and is expected to be in the vicinity of Cuyo island in western Palawan province by tomorrow afternoon.

Source : PTI