TACLOBAN, Leyte -- Rescuers were working into the night yesterday trying to reach an elementary school with nearly 250 children and adults buried in a landslide in Saint Bernard town, Southern Leyte, officials said yesterday.

They were among around 1,500 feared missing when the side of a mountain collapsed, flattening the village of Guinsaugon.

Among the people buried inside were local health workers who were celebrating the anniversary of a health program at the school auditorium, said survivors interviewed on local television.

Redgie Cabug-os, a local nurse, said she was still waiting to see if her sister-in-law, also a nurse at the buried school, might still be found alive.

Cabug-os said she was one of the first to rush to the scene after the landslide but could see nothing.

"We are still hoping," she said, even as she conceded that when viewed from a distance, "you would say there are no survivors."

"We are just consoling ourselves. We might see tomorrow, there may be more people rescued," she said.

"It sounded like there was a big explosion in the mountaintop. The next thing they knew, the mud was flowing down -- and the next thing they knew, the whole village was covered," said Leyte Governor Rosette Lerias.

Lerias confirmed that the local elementary school was among the places buried in the landslide, adding that so far, no one had been recovered from the scene.

The only two schoolchildren to escape had been sent out on an errand by their father, she told ABS-CBN television.

But Lerias remained hopeful that some of these people could still be rescued alive.

"The rule of thumb is, if it is within 24 hours, they can still be alive," she said in a television interview.

The schoolhouse was near the center of the village when a landslide, spawned by heavy rains and a mild earthquake, brought down a nearby mountainside.

The Red Cross estimates that about 200 people may have been killed and 1,500 missing but so far only 16 bodies have been recovered, according to local officials on the scene.

Heavy equipment has had trouble getting to the site due to the mud and rescuers have been forced to dig manually.

The absence of lights also forced many of the rescuers to call off their search after nightfall, the governor said.*AFP

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