MANILA, Dec 21: Rescuers used bare hands and shovels in the Philippines on Sunday to search for missing friends and relatives after landslides, flash floods and a tornado killed scores of people at the weekend.

With hopes fading for 114 people believed missing, the government said the United States was sending all-weather helicopters to help the rescue efforts hampered by rains and strong winds.

Officials blamed the disaster on illegal logging, which had denuded the mountains near where many of the victims lived in Leyte and Mindanao islands.

“People here are helping dig up their own neighbours,” police General Dionisio Coloma said in a radio interview from Liloan town. “The mountain just came down on them.”

The Office of Civil Defence in Manila said 61 people were killed in the landslides, flood and a tornado in central Leyte and 15 in southern Mindanao.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo told reporters American Chinook helicopters would arrive from US bases in Okinawa in Japan.

“If they are really buried under mud, then maybe there is only little hope left for them,” civil defence officer Paul Nogra told Reuters by phone from the Leyte provincial capital of Tacloban.

Soldiers and civilian volunteers were taking part in the search and rescue operations in Leyte but heavy winds and rain forced back two helicopters which tried to fly to the scene on Sunday, OCD head Melchor Rosales said.

Most of the people were asleep when tonnes of mud and other debris swamped their houses, an OCD spokesman in Leyte said.

“I am very sad that this tragedy has happened during the Christmas season,” said Arroyo, who heads a majority Christian nation.—Reuters