AUTHORITIES have evacuated residents in five villages vulnerable to landslides after a mountainside collapsed, burying homes and killing at least 29 people.
Some residents left on their own, but the bulk of more than 1200 people in villages near the area were forced to move by authorities on Thursday night, police chief superintendent Debold Sinas said.
Survivors heard a thunderous roar, crashing and banging when the mountainside fell onto rural houses and shanties in two villages in Cebu on Thursday morning.
Some people trapped in the sludge managed to send texts pleading for help but the messages stopped within a few hours.
Relatives begged for more diggers to be brought in, hoping loved ones could be pulled out alive, but there were too few machines to dig for the dozens of people missing.
Resident Nimrod Parba said one of his trapped relatives called for help three hours after the landslide entombed 13 members of his family. “They are still under the rubble, they are still there. They are covered in shallow earth, we need a backhoe.”
About 270 government troops and police were deployed to prevent residents from returning to high-risk villages, Sinas said.
President Rodrigo Duterte is to visit the sites later as he faces his latest crisis.
It remains unclear what set off the landslide.
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