Rescue efforts are under way in the northern Philippines as authorities have raised the death toll of Typhoon Mangkhut to 65.
Philippines National Police said that as of Monday, a further 43 people remained missing and 64 were wounded as a result of the world’s strongest storm of this year.
All but one of the missing are in the Cordillera Administrative Region, which saw a number of landslides.
Philippine police earlier said that at least 40 people, the majority of them gold miners, were feared to have been trapped when part of a mountain slope collapsed on miners’ barracks in a remote village of Itogon town in Benguet province.
Seven bodies were dug out there on Sunday with rescue work resuming on Monday morning.
The Philippine government on Monday ordered a stop to all illegal mining in six mountainous northern provinces in hopes of preventing more tragedies.
In a press conference, Environmental Secretary Roy Cimatu said the army and police would be deployed to enforce the ban.
Typhoon Mangkhut, locally named Ompong, made landfall on Luzon Island in northern Philippines on Saturday.
On Monday morning, it weakened to a tropical storm after battering Hong Kong and parts of southern China on Sunday.
Chinese state TV on Monday said that four were killed in China as a result of Mangkhut. Millions were evacuated.
Damage revealed slowly
Reporting from Luzon Island, Al Jazeera’s Jamela Alindogan said the full extent of the damage caused by the typhoon was being revealed slowly.
“That’s because so many of these areas were cut off and also because of the enormity of the impact of this typhoon across northern Luzon,” she said.
“We’re getting reports that there may be small landslides that have occurred but have yet to be accessed by rescue officials, the chances of actually finding survivors are slim.
“There’s also the immediate challenge of people who are going hungry, those who have been evacuated and have lost their homes and their livelihoods.”
Livelihoods destroyed
Homes and farmlands were left destroyed in rural communities in Luzon’s northeastern Cagayan province.
One of the towns which bore the brunt of the destruction was Baggao.
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| Rescue workers clear a road of debris and toppled electric posts as they try to reach Baggao [Ted Aljibe/AFP] |
A quarter of people in the region live in poverty and get by on less than $2 a day.
“There is significant destruction of property and root crops,” General Emmanuel Salamat of the Philippine Marines told Al Jazeera.
Cafe owner Julie Rosales had only her small cafeteria to support her family, but now it is gone.
“It really hurts us, we don’t know where to begin,” she said.
“Everything happened so fast and now my business is gone.”
Many in Baggao defied a forced evacuation order by the government to protect their livelihoods.
“Our house was blown away. We were flooded,” 55-year-old Diday Llorente told AFP news agency.
“But we did not evacuate because we didn’t want to leave our carabao [water buffalo] and livestock.”
SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies
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