At least 22 people died from a storm that swept through the central Philippine islands at the weekend, authorities said yesterday, with rescue operations under way in flood-inundated communities.

The death toll rose from four a day after the storm brought heavy rain to the Bicol and Eastern Visayas regions, causing massive flooding and landslides, the government’s office of civil defence said.

Many of the deaths were due to landslides and drowning, it added, saying floods had yet to recede even as the weather disturbance known locally as “Usman” weakened into a low pressure area. “Most of the (affected) areas are underwater. We are sending troops and rubber boats to rescue families. In some areas the floods have reached the roofs of homes,” Claudio Yucot, head of the Bicol region’s office of civil defence, told AFP.

At least 16 people died in Bicol while six others were killed in Eastern Visayas, civil defence officials said.