Rescuers were losing hope Tuesday of finding nearly 900 people missing after a typhoon struck the southern Philippines last week, killing 714 people. Typhoon Bopha, the strongest cyclone to hit the Philippines this year, slammed into the southern region of Mindanao on December 4, triggering widespread floods and landslides that wiped out entire villages. Rescuers have not found survivors for the past three days, and officials said they feared they would discover only bodies one week after the typhoon. "We can no longer say that we can recover many survivors," said Major General Ariel Bernardo, an army division commander overseeing the emergency operations. "What we may recover are bodies." "There is little chance" of finding more survivors, he was quoted as saying by DPA.
