MORE than 1000 people are missing in the Philippines after devastating floods that have already left more than 1000 others confirmed dead, the government said today.
The latest toll stood at 1079 missing, up from 51, and 1080 dead, up from 1010.
The big jump in the missing toll came as rural families reported large numbers of relatives had gone to work in hard-hit southern cities and remained unaccounted for, civil defense official Ana Caneda told AFP.
"There are whole families who have gone missing or who died. No one inquired about them before," Caneda said.
She said entire families had been wiped out in the hard-hit southern ports of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan on Mindanao island, and because they had no relatives left in the cities, there was no-one to report their disappearance to the authorities.
Nearly a week after the flash floods wrought by Tropical Storm Washi, relatives from nearby provinces had descended on the disaster zones and raised the alarm after finding their families' homes gone, she said.
The government's civil defense agency, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, listed 674 dead in and 626 missing in Cagayan de Oro, along with 312 dead and 406 missing in Iligan.
The country's civil defense chief Benito Ramos however told AFP that the missing list is just an estimate and that not even local officials could say for sure how many people had really disappeared.
Caneda, who is based in Cagayan de Oro, conceded those listed as missing could be among the unidentified bodies that are piling up at local mortuaries.
Entire neighborhoods in Cagayan de Oro, a city of half a million people, and nearby Iligan, a port of 100,000 people, were swept away or were flattened by rampaging floodwaters early Saturday.
Many of the dead were swept to sea along with their homes.
The United Nations, which launched a $28.6 million aid appeal on Thursday, likened the disaster to that of a tsunami.
Bernard Kerblatt, the Manila representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said it would airlift 46 tons (42 tonnes) of emergency shelters, blankets, and kitchen implements to the flood areas later today.
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