In the heavily-damaged northern province of Pangasinan, many towns remained under water while landslides had virtually cut off mountainous communities from rescuers, disaster relief officials said.

Social Welfare Secretary Esperanza Cabral said the government had sent tons of food, medicines and clothes to a military base in the north but delivery to affected communities was slow.

"There is a significant number of people affected," she said. "Our problem is getting to them."

She said helicopters have been dropping food packs in Pangasinan, a province of 2.5 million that has been submerged in deep waters for the past three days.

Four US military helicopters were due to airlift 10 tons of food to Baguio, a popular mountain resort that has been isolated after deadly landslides triggered by tropical storm Parma, spokesman Captain Jorge Escatell told AFP.

"It's going to be an all-day mission... we are trying to get some help out there," he said.

There have given varying reports of casualties, but the police in the Cordillera Administrative Region, which includes Baguio and several provinces hit with deadly landslides, said the death toll there alone climbed to 275 as more bodies were dug up from landslides Sunday.

The National Disaster Coordinating Council in Manila however placed the official toll at 193 from Parma, which finally blew out into the South China Sea late Friday after pummelling northern Luzon for a week.

Altogether the death toll from Parma and tropical storm Ketsana, which killed 337 in Manila and surrounding areas, now stands at over 636, with fears the toll could rise, officials said.

Ketsana triggered the worst flooding in Manila and nearby areas in four decades on September 26, and many areas still remain flooded two weeks later.

Both storms affected over six million people, with over 300,000 people remaining in evacuation camps.

Many highways remained impassable to all types of vehicles in the provinces of Tarlac and Pangasinan, with flood waters unable to empty out into the Lingayen Gulf to the west of Luzon because of high tides.

Television footage shot by rescuers showed houses, malls and factories submerged in a vast sea of brown water, with rescuers plucking survivors off trees and rooftops the past two days.

The flooding was largely due to heavy rains and water released by the authorities from two dams that were in danger of bursting.

In the Cordillera region, meanwhile, roads and bridges were destroyed by a deadly cocktail of mud and rocks, while houses lay in ruins.

Mud-streaked residents carrying belongings were shown dangerously negotiating a muddy cliff that was once a mountain pass.

Parts of Baguio, where President Gloria Arroyo maintains a retreat house, was also flooded with run-off water from the slopes.

Secretary Cabral said she expected the number of people in evacuation camps in the north to rise significantly in the coming days once the military is able to clear up roads of debris.

earlier related report
Landslide deaths lift Philippine storm toll past 540
The death toll from two weeks of unprecedented storms across the northern Philippines soared past 540 on Friday after landslides consumed homes and neck-deep floods inundated towns.

At least 181 people were killed in a series of rain-triggered landslides overnight Thursday and on Friday in mountainous regions of the Philippines' main island of Luzon, local officials reported.

Meanwhile, the downstream farming plains of central Luzon were inundated with waters that reached two storeys high after dams in the mountains could not hold the phenomenal amount of water that has fallen on the region.

"The rains in this area are unprecedented," the executive officer of the National Disaster Coordinating Council, Glenn Rabonza, told AFP.

"We are stretched, no doubt, but we are responding in the best way we can."

The crisis showed no signs of easing as tropical storm Parma, responsible for the past week of rains, continued to hover just off Luzon.

Further south on Luzon, in the nation's capital Manila, nearly 300,000 homeless survivors from Tropical Storm Ketsana were packed into evacuation camps following record rains on September 26 that killed at least 337 people.

US troops helping out in the capital extended their relief work to the north on Friday, dispatching helicopters and other rescue equipment, the Filipino military said.

The US embassy announced an extra two million dollars in aid for the Parma victims on top of money and materials donated for the Ketsana operations, while UN humanitarian chief John Holmes is to begin a two-day visit to the country Monday to review relief efforts, the world body said.

The worst of the overnight landslides appeared to be in remote Benguet province, where 120 people were confirmed killed in five towns, said provincial governor Nestor Fongwan.

Another 38 people were confirmed killed in the neighbouring mountain resort of Baguio, officials there said.

Across all of the north, the confirmed death toll from the landslides was 181, on top of the 25 people killed earlier by Parma.

In the farming region of Pangasinan province to the southwest of the provinces where the landslides occurred, thousands of people were stranded on rooftops in dangerously similar scenes to those in Manila a fortnight ago.

Days of rain from Parma forced authorities to open the gates on five dams, sending water cascading through dozens of towns in Pangasinan, which has a population of 2.5 million people.

"A lot of places cannot be reached by our rubber boats because the current is too strong due to the waters released by San Roque dam," Pangasinan governor Amado Espino said.

"The dam is supposed to be for flood control but now it is so filled it is like it is not there. The water just rushes right through from the mountains to Pangasinan."

The disaster council's Rabonza said about 60 percent of Pangasinan, including about 30 towns, were flooded with waters reaching as high as the second floor of buildings.

In the town of Rosales, neck-high waters swallowed up houses, vehicles, rice fields and even a large shopping mall.

Desperate local officials made urgent pleas for rubber boats and helicopters to rescue those stranded by the floods.

Parma has been hanging over the northern Philippines since initially hitting as a typhoon on October 3.

Parma hit the Philippines exactly one week after tropical storm Ketsana dumped the heaviest rains in more than four decades on Manila.

The government has been overwhelmed by the crisis, which has forced hundreds of thousands of people in Manila and other parts of Luzon into makeshift evacuation centres after losing their homes to the floods.

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