Manila — Rescuers used bulldozers to dig through mountains of mud in the search for more than 40 people missing in the eastern Philippines after landslides triggered by a powerful storm which killed at least 31 at the weekend, authorities said Monday. Tropical Storm Kai-Tak was heading out to the South China Sea Monday afternoon after dragging its way across the archipelagic nation at the weekend, leaving at least 31 people dead, most of them from drowning and landslides, government officials said. President Rodrigo Duterte’s spokesman, Harry Roque, also said 49 people were still missing. The island province of Biliran suffered the brunt of the storm as the heavy rains caused landslides that buried many homes and destroyed roads and bridges. Rescuers searching for survivors on the island were not optimistic. "There is an assumption that the missing are already dead," Sofronio Dacillo, a provincial disaster risk reduction and management officer, told AFP. The largely agricultural isl...
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