JAKARTA - A total of 13 people were declared dead due to heavy rains that caused flooding during the Christmas weekend in the southern Philippines, authorities said Tuesday, while 23 others are still being searched.
Most of the deaths were caused by drowning from flash floods, after two days of heavy rains disrupted Christmas celebrations and forced more than 45,000 people to take refuge in evacuation centers, the disaster agency said.
Images on social media show coast guards, police, and firefighters traversing waist-high floods and taking residents along the landslide-hit area. Several roads were flooded by rivers overflowing nearby.
Rescue operations continue and agricultural damage is being assessed, Carmelito Heray, head of the disaster agency in Lecturer City, Occidental Misamis Province, told DZBB radio station.
There are no tropical storms on the country's most important holiday, most of which are Catholics. But the sliding line, an area where warm and cold winds meet, causes rain clouds to form in the southern Philippines.
"The big damage here is the livestock because their pigs, chickens, goats and adult cows are now missing," said Mayor Lebarin Emeterio Roa on the radio.
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