Landslide Devastates Small Philippines Mining Town, 27 Dead

A small gold mining town in the southern Philippines was devastated by a landslide early Friday morning. Rocks and mud swept through the village of Kingking around 3 a.m., destroying homes and killing at least 27 people. Dozens of other villagers are missing and feared dead.

Lieutenant-Colonel Camilo Ligayo, a spokesman for the military unit sent to the area, put the number of missing at 40. "There are 40 still missing and that is a conservative estimate. The one who gave the estimate was one of the survivors from the tunnels. They know each other there," he told the AFP. "The landslide is massive and these people, the small scale miners, they work and live on the slopes. They have bunkers, houses, stores."

As of Friday afternoon, 10 people had been rescued and 3 bodies had been recovered. Kingking is located on the island of Mindanao in Compostela province.

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