Some 600 people are dead or missing after typhoon Fengshen roared through the Philippines, the Red Cross and civil defence said yesterday, dramatically raising the number unaccounted for.

Landslides, severe flooding and the loss of dozens of fishing boats had left at least 224 dead and 376 missing, they said, mostly in central areas which bore the brunt of the storm.

The fi-gures, up from just six confirmed missing on Sunday while the death toll has been slightly lowered, do not include passengers and crew from a ferry which sank carrying 747 people. So far, only 32 survivors have been found.

More than 200 people were still missing in the central island of Negros, while 63,000 people are still in evacuation centres after flash floods and landslides forced them to flee their homes, the civil defence agency said. Flooding had not yet receded in many parts of Bulacan province, just outside the capital Manila, it added. Power was fully restored in Manila but had not yet returned in some areas outside the capital where lines had been toppled.

Decomposing bodies

Typhoon Fengshen slammed into the central Philippines late Saturday before changing course and moving north across much of the archipelago. It left through the northwestern side of the main island of Luzon before dawn yesterday, moving northwest at 15 kilometres per hour.

Moreover, there was little hope on Monday of finding the 747 people missing from the capsized ferry, as divers prepared to drill into the ship?s hull in the hope of finding survivors in air pockets.

Coast guard boats searched the area around the capsized ferry. A spokesman for the navy said a team approached the ship on Sunday afternoon to check for possible survivors. ?We just approached the hull of the ship, we got near and then banged, knocked in order for us to give a sign if ever there are still people inside,? Lieutenant-Colonel Edgard Arevalo said. ?Unfortunately there was no response.?

A US vessel was en route to help with search efforts and was expected to reach the site in around 15 hours, Jesus Dureza, a spokesman from the presidential palace said.

Nine male corpses believed to be passengers from the MV Princess of Stars washed ashore on the central island of Masbate yesterday. ?The bodies were bloated and decomposing. What we did was just to wrap them up and buried them right away,? a local mayor told radio.

Photographs showed only the tip of the ship?s bow visible above the waves. In the worst-hit province of Iloilo, damage to agriculture and infrastructure was pegged at 1.7 billion pesos ($38 million).

The Department of Agriculture said in a statement nearly 250,000 ha of farmland were damaged, mostly paddy fields, at a cost of nearly 555 million pesos.

Not enough rice

Disaster officials were worried about food supplies for evacuees, crammed into schools, churches and townhalls. ?I don?t think they have enough rice to tide them over,? Richard Gordon, the chairman of the Philippines? Red Cross, told local television.

The typhoon is currently over the South China Sea and is expected to weaken to a tropical storm as it moves northwards. It will likely bring heavy rain and winds to Taiwan and Zhangzhou and Fuzhou in China in the next few days according to storm tracker website www.tropicalstormrisk.com.

Philippine transport authorities said they had grounded the vessels of ferry company Sulpicio Lines for inspection. The company?s ships, like the MV Princess of Stars, have been involved in three other major disasters over the past 21 years.

In 1987, the Sulpicio-owned Dona Paz ferry collided with an oil tanker killing more than 4,000 people in the world?s worst peacetime sea tragedy.