MANILA: More than 200 people have been killed and scores were missing in the southern Philippines Sunday after a tropical storm triggered severe flooding and landslides that also wrecked Christmas for tens of thousands of survivors, reports AFP.

Tropical Storm Tembin lashed Mindanao island, home to 20 million people, on Friday with strong gusts and torrential rain, wiping out at least one mountain village and prompting a massive rescue operation.

Police said 208 people were confirmed dead and 164 remained missing, while more than 40,000 had fled their homes for evacuation camps as Tembin roared out into the South China Sea early Sunday.

A total of 70,000 have been displaced or otherwise affected by the storm, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), which warned that continued heavy rain could hamper the search for survivors.

“People left everything behind when they fled for their lives,” the IFRC’s Philippines operations and programmes manager Patrick Elliott said in a statement.