Manila mops up after storm, death toll rises

MANILA, Sep 29 (Reuters) Residents of the Philippine capital picked their way through the aftermath of typhoon Xangsane today with large parts of their city still without power, debris-strewn streets and a rising death toll.

Xangsane, which swept into the centre of the country on Wednesday with winds of up to 130 kph (81 mph) and gusts of 160 kph, roared through Manila yesterday ripping up lamp posts, roofs and billboards and bringing the city to a near standstill.

Violent winds and flood waters in the central islands and Manila killed at least 16 people and nearly 2,000 ferry passengers were still stranded, disaster officials said.

''It is one of the worst devastations that Manila has experienced,'' Mayor Lito Atienza told local radio.

Xangsane, which weakened over the Philippines on Thursday, strengthened back to a typhoon as it left the country and is heading westward towards the Vietnamese beach resort of Danang, which it is expected to hit on Saturday afternoon.

Xangsane's centre is currently around 450 km northwest of Manila but the typhoon's destructive path was still visible to the city's 12 million residents with uprooted trees, toppled cars and electrical polls blocking streets.

Manila, along with two provinces, was declared under a state of calamity and trading on the stock exchange and local currency market suspended for a second day due to widespread power outages.

Schools and public offices in the capital remained shut and in the centre of the country, 16 villages were flooded.

Nearly 61,000 people were affected by landslides, flood waters and wind damage and the bill for damage to agriculture and infrastructure was estimated at 134 million pesos (2.7 million dollars) in six central provinces in the rural Bicol region.

Xangsane was the 13th typhoon to hit the Philippines this year.

Tropical storms regularly hit the archipelago of about 7,000 islands. In the worst disaster in recent years, more than 5,000 people died in central Leyte island in 1991 in floods triggered by a typhoon.

In 2004, about 1,800 people were killed or went missing in a series of storms. The toll included 480 who were killed when mudslides hit three towns in Quezon, an eastern province.

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