The death toll in the Philippines from one of the country's worst natural disaster in two decades has risen to 1,249 with about 1,100 missing, as communist rebels said people responsible should be punished.
Typhoon Washi sent torrents of water, mud and logs cascading through riverside and coastal villages on Mindanao island in mid-December, destroying more than 10,000 houses and displacing more than 300,000 people, who are mostly in emergency shelters.
Benito Ramos, head of the national disaster agency, said fishermen from as far as the central island of Bohol were helping recover bodies that had been washed hundreds of miles away.
Authorities had expanded the search area to a radius of 300km.
President Benigno Aquino, who inspected the disaster zone last week, has ordered an investigation, asking why officials had allow people to build houses in danger zones and had not stopped illegal logging.
The regional head of forestry and mining had resigned and an official supervising Lanao del Sur province had been removed, Radio DzMM reported. Most of the logs that crashed into houses were washed down from Lanao del Sur province.
the communist party ordered its guerrillas to raise funds and help in relief efforts, and, as it marked its 43rd anniversary, it threatened its own punishment for those responsible for the disaster.
The military said the rebels were using the disaster as a pretence to step up extortion of mining, plantation, logging and construction companies.
The government and the Maoist rebels have declared unilateral truces during the Christmas and New Year holiday.
Only about 30% of victims found under tonnes of mud and debris and in the sea had been identified, because most people have no dental records and the government has no DNA database.
The bodies of victims that have been identified and have been handed over to relatives but the rest are being kept in concrete vaults.
Elsewhere, The Minister of State for Trade and Development, Joe Costello T.D, has announced the arrival of emergency shelter supplies to assist thousands of families left homeless by the typhoon which hit the Philippines earlier this month.
The Minister said that the shipment of 400 large tents and 15,000 blankets will support the international relief operation on the island of Mindanao, which was devastated by landslides and severe flooding following a tropical storm on 15 and 16 December.
