Philippine storm death toll over 900

The death toll from a destructive storm that hit the southern Philippines has risen to 927 as bodies surfaced in the sea, the head of the government disaster monitoring council said Tuesday. The death toll is expected to rise even further as more floating bodies are recovered after sunrise, said Benito Ramos, head of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council.
He put the total of the dead at 927, adding that the council had lost count of all those still missing after tropical storm Washi brought heavy rains, flash floods and overflowing rivers to the southern island of Mindanao. "They (the dead bodies) were washed out to sea. They were underwater for the first three days but now, in their state of decomposition, they are bloated and floating to the surface," Ramos told AFP.
"The death toll will rise again (in the morning) when more bodies surface." The huge death toll came as government relief workers recovered more bodies from Mindanao, particularly in the devastated port cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan, which have borne most of the deaths from tropical storm Washi.
Whole villages perched on sandbars or on the shores of rivers were washed away when Washi struck Mindanao and nearby areas over the weekend. Ramos's latest toll was a sharp increase from the council's previous figures of 662 dead and 82 missing issued mere hours earlier The Philippine Red Cross, which is doing its own tally, reported 713 dead and 563 missing in a statement. Both Iligan and Cagayan de Oro are planning mass burials of their dead as scores of decomposing bodies have swamped the local funeral parlours, filling the air with an overpowering stench.
The disaster area, located about 800 kilometres (500 miles) from the capital Manila, is normally bypassed by the average of 20 typhoons that ravage other parts of the far-flung Philippine archipelago every year. As a result, many residents were caught by surprise when floods suddenly hit their homes in the dead of night, before dawn Saturday. More than 88,000 people have been displaced by the storm with over half of them huddled in crowded, makeshift government evacuation centres, the disaster management council said.
President Benigno Aquino is also scheduled to visit the storm-hit areas on Tuesday after ordering a review of government disaster prevention measures.