Typhoon death toll at 80 in Philippines

Ferry capzises over 800 on board:

PHILIPPINES: Typhoon Fengshen lashed the Philippines for a second day Sunday, leaving at least 80 people dead as it submerged entire communities and capsized a passenger ferry carrying more than 740 passengers and crew. Only three survivors from the ferry were found so far.

The death toll included 59 people who drowned in the central province of Iloilo, with another 40 missing, Gov. Neil Tupaz said.

“Almost all the towns are covered by water. It’s like an ocean,” Tupaz said, adding thousands have been displaced in the province that is home to 1.7 million people.

TV footage showed rescuers holding on to a long rope strewn across raging floodwaters in an Iloilo village to pluck three residents trapped on top of a partly engulfed van.

In a nearby village, residents pulled out a body from a muddy field then laid it beside another they found earlier.

Villagers found four bodies, children’s slippers and life jackets

that washed ashore Sunday near the stalled MV Princess of Stars.

The dead, including a man and a woman who bound themselves together, were believed to have been on the vessel, which initially ran aground a few miles (kilometers) off central Sibuyan island Saturday, then capsized, said Mayor Nanette Tansingco of San Fernando on Sibuyan island.

At least three survivors from the ferry were found in Sibuyan’s Mabini village and police were ordered to go there. But all the roads to the village, where many houses were washed away by huge waves, were blocked by toppled trees, Tansingco told DZBB radio.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo directed the defense and local government departments to stand by for relief and rescue missions before she left for the United States late Saturday.

Manila, Tusday, AP