Manila typhoon quietens rebels; toll 477

MANILA: Philippine communist guerrillas offered to suspend attacks in typhoon-hit areas yesterday, as the military led efforts to look for hundreds of missing from a disaster that claimed 477 lives.
“In light of the urgent humanitarian considerations, the (New People’s Army) can suspend offensive military operations... for a period of time,” the rebel group’s parent organization the Communist Party of the Philippines said.
A rebel statement said its forces would “raise funds, seek donations and contributions” for Typhoon Bopha’s victims on the southern island of Mindanao, while its armed guerrillas would help in the relief work.
In reaction, military spokesman Colonel Arnulfo Burgos, said “if they really want peace and stability for our country for unhampered progress and development, they should abandon armed violence”.
Typhoon Bopha ploughed across Mindanao island on Tuesday, flattening whole towns in its path as hurricane-force winds brought torrential rain that triggered a deadly combination of floods and landslides.
The army said it was looking for at least 377 missing people while seeking help for more than 179,000 others who sheltered in schools, gyms and other buildings after losing everything.
Officials said many victims were poor migrants who flocked to landslide-prone sites like New Bataan and the nearby town of Monkayo to farm the lower slopes of mountains or work at unregulated mines in the gold rush area.
Of the dead, 258 were found on the east coast of Mindanao while 191 were recovered in and around New Bataan and Monkayo, said Major-General Ariel Bernardo, head of an army division involved in the search.
The civil defense office in Manila said 17 people were killed elsewhere in Mindanao along with nine in the central Visayan islands.
“We still have more than 377 missing and our challenge now is really to try to get to them,” he told AFP.
Shell-shocked survivors scrabbled through the rubble of their homes to find anything that could be recovered, as relatives searched for missing family members among mud-caked bodies laid out in rows on tarpaulins.
Civil defense chief Benito Ramos refused to give up hope for the missing.
“There is no time limit — as long as it takes,” he told reporters when asked how long the search and rescue effort would take.
One man was rescued after being trapped for two days under rocks and debris after flash floods swept away his entire family.
Covered in mud and teary-eyed, Carlos Agang recounted how a small community of banana and coconut farmers was devastated as Bopha unleashed a wall of water.
“It’s a miracle that I survived, but I might as well be dead,” he said.
President Benigno Aquino has sent food and other supplies by ship to 150,000 people on Mindanao’s east coast where three towns remain cut off by landslides and wrecked bridges, Interior Secretary Mar Roxas said.
Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman said the government had sought help from the Swiss-based International Organization for Migration to build temporary shelters to ease the pressure on evacuation camps.