London - Arabstoday
The Philippine government officials say a massive landslide in the country's south has killed at least 25 people and injured 15 others. The landslide hit a small community of gold prospectors near the town of Patukan in the Mindanao region early Thursday. More than a hundred people have also gone missing, most of them believed to have been buried under the rubble. Army units have been deployed to the area to help with rescue efforts. The landslide has occurred while the death toll from the devastating floods in the southern Philippines last month has risen to 1,500 with hundreds more still missing. Rescue workers have been conducting search and retrieval operations in a radius of 300 kilometers after tropical storm Washi washed away entire villages in the south of the country in mid-December. The tropical storm, which churned across the southern Philippines between December 16 and 18, caused rivers to burst their banks, leading to landslides and flash floods. The storm and floods have also displaced around 330,000 people and damaged more than 10,000 homes.