LEAD: Rescuers search for missing after strong Philippine quake

Feb 7, 2012, 5:32 GMT

Manila - Rescuers dug through debris and mud in the central Philippines Tuesday in search of dozens missing a day after a 6.9-magnitude earthquake triggered landslides, collapsed houses and killed at least 43 people.

More than 400 soldiers were dispatched to several villages in the central province of Negros Oriental, 570 kilometres south of Manila, which suffered the most damage from Monday's quake, said army Colonel Francisco Zosimo Patrimonio.

At least 40 people were missing in one village in La Libertad town in Negros Oriental, where about 40 houses were buried in a landslide, Patrimonio said Tuesday.

He said on Monday that 43 people had been confirmed dead across Negros Oriental province, including 29 people in a landslide in the village of Planas in Guihulngan City.

Guihulngan City Mayor Ernesto Reyes said search operations were being hampered by strong aftershocks.

'Many rescuers are here but we've had to stop our operations from time to time because there are still earthquakes occurring,' he told a Manila TV station. 'Just now, it's shaking very hard and the road where I'm standing is cracking.'

Reyes said he feared that the death toll in Guihulngan City alone could be higher than 50 already.

'I'm afraid we would not find survivors from the landslide in Planas,' he said. 'They are all probably dead by now.'

The quake struck at 11:49 am (0349 GMT) on Monday and was felt in at least seven central provinces, including Negros Occidental, Iloilo, Cebu and Bacolod, according to the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.

More than 900 aftershocks have been recorded since Monday, the strongest at magnitude 6.2.

Thousands of residents in affected areas were sleeping outside for fear that their houses would collapse in the aftershocks, while some hospitals also moved patients outdoors overnight.

The Philippines, located in the Pacific 'Ring of Fire,' suffered its worst earthquake in 1990 when a 7.7-magnitude tremor killed nearly 2,000 people on the northern island of Luzon.