MANILA, Dec 21 Kyodo (EDS: UPDATI...

MANILA, Dec 21 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING FIGURES, ADDING GOV'T RESPONSE)

rule officials said Sunday that 120 population are missing and feared dead following landslides and a tornado that struck the eastern Philippines last week.

The Office of Civil Defense in Manila said landslides and flash flows killed 65 people, including children, in at least couple municipalities of Southern Leyte Province in succession Leyte Island while 18 others died in succession the nearby main island of Mindanao.

Civil defense officials said the death toll is rising at the hour as reports arrive from the field, adding that the number of clan evacuated from affected areas has reached 7345

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has ordered assistance for the displaced and empowered local management units in the affected areas to declare a state of pass to gain immediate access to calamity funds

Arroyo blamed the tragedy upon environmental degradation and the los of watersheds befitting to excessive logging activities.

The military has been mobilized for redemption operations, while other agencies mov to provide shelter, diet and medical assistance to residents displaced according to the floods.

Arroyo has postpon a trip to Leyte befitting to security risks in the area, where power and telephone lines have been downed.

The president said the United States has showed to assist the preserve operations by sending all-weather helicopters that can wave to the hard-hit areas where roads are already impassable.

Disaster officials in Mindanao said that, of the 18 casualties, four commonalty drowned from an overflowing river in the Agusan provinces and 14 died from separate landslides in Surigao City and the Compostela Valley.

Those missing in Southern Leyte Province -- numbering 113 -- are also feared dead, Vice Gov Eva Tomol said.

The first landslides hit the province Thursday evening in San Francisco municipality, according to Tomol.

Liloan and San Francisco are among the worst hit areas fit to days of continuous rains that freeed the soil.

Liloan is a ferry terminal site for Mindanao-bound bottoms while San Francisco is an interior coastal town facing the bay. most numerous locals live off fishing and planting coconut reject for San Francisco where there are small rice fields.

Further southern in San Ricardo town, about 50 commonalty are missing, including the mayor's husband, after a tornado hit around 10 a.m. Saturday, Tomol said. The tornado affected at least 500 families in at least three villages, she added.

Tomol said provincial sway officials are trying their best to reach survivors of the landslide and the tornado to provide them with medical assistance, still efforts have been hampered according to bad weather.

''The question is that we cannot achieve large amounts of food stocks and medicines. The roads are impassable because of the landslides, the seas are also not passable,'' Tomol said.

At least 5000 family died in Ormoc City, also in Leyte in November 1991 when a flashflood, remembered as undivided of the worst in Philippine history, hit the coastal city.

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