Philippines rescuers find girl alive 60 hours after landslide

The rescue of a child nearly 60 hours after a landslide hit a gold-mining village in the southern Philippines has been hailed as a “miracle” after searchers had given up hope of finding more survivors.

The girl, who the Philippine Red Cross said was three years old, had been among scores of people missing after the rain-induced landslide hit the village.

Officials said on Friday the death toll had almost doubled to 27.

The girl was found as rescuers used their hands and shovels to look for survivors in Masara village on southern Mindanao island, a disaster agency official, Edward Macapili of Davao de Oro province, said.

“It’s a miracle,” Macapili said, adding that searchers had believed those missing were probably dead.

“That gives hope to the rescuers. A child’s resilience is usually less than that of adults, yet the child survived.”

Video of a rescuer carrying the crying, mud-caked child in his arms was shared on Facebook.

“We can see in the social media posts that the child did not have any visible injuries,” Macapili said.

He added that the girl’s father saw his child before she was taken to a medical facility.

The Philippine Red Cross posted photos on Facebook of their workers carrying the girl, wrapped in an emergency blanket and hooked up to an oxygen tank, into a hospital in Mawab municipality.

The landslide occurred on Tuesday night, destroying houses and engulfing three buses and a jeepney waiting to pick up workers from a goldmine.

Landslides are a frequent risk across the archipelago islands owing to the mountainous terrain, heavy rainfall, and widespread deforestation from mining, slash-and-burn farming and illegal logging.

Rain has intensified in parts of Mindanao for weeks, triggering dozens of landslides and flooding that have forced tens of thousands of people into emergency shelters.

Earthquakes halted a search on Saturday.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage from the magnitude 5.8 quake that shook the Mindanao region at 11:22 am (03:22 GMT) or from a second magnitude 5.4 tremor that followed about two hours later.

Massive earthquakes have also destabilised the region in recent months.

Hundreds of families from Masara and four nearby villages have had to evacuate from their homes and shelter in emergency centres for fear of further landslides.

Schools across the municipality have suspended classes.

The area hit by the landslide had been declared a “no-build zone” after previous landslides in 2007 and 2008, Macapili told AFP.

“People were asked to leave that place and they were given a resettlement area, but the people are so hard-headed and they returned,” he said.