MANILA, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Rescuers found two bodies inside an abandoned mine in the Philippines on Thursday but search operations were suspended due to heavy rain, officials said, and hope of finding survivors was fading. Local government and police officials said the chance of survival for the 14 people still trapped in the flooded gold mine in the northern mountain region were fast fading three days after the tunnels collapsed due to rains brought by Typhoon Hagupit. "Our rescue teams found two bodies floating when they reached an area where the miners where believed to have been trapped," Paeng Valencia, head of a private rescue team, told reporters. "There were no other signs of life. But our teams would continue to search and hope to find the other 14 miners. But, we're resuming our operations tomorrow because it was raining hard and the tunnel might collapse again." Disaster officials said the number of people trapped in the mine rose to 16 after some of their family members reported to local police that they remained missing after entering the mine. There has been no communication with the missing miners, but people in the community know they had been regularly going into the mine. Early this month, 20 people were killed and about two dozen were injured when monsoon rains loosened soil and buried a mining village in the southern Philippines, forcing officials to close down two villages. Landslides and flash floods are common across the Philippine archipelago during the monsoon months between May and October, particularly near mining areas, as well as low-lying and coastal areas. In February 2006, more than 1,000 people died when days of monsoon rain triggered a massive landslide on a deforested mountain on the central island of Leyte, burying an entire village, including a school where many people had sought refuge. The country's worst disaster also happened on the same island in November 1991 when 5,000 people were swept to the sea by flash floods brought by monsoon rains. (Reporting by Manny Mogato; Editing by Valerie Lee)
A resident cleans his house which is destroyed by typhoon Hagupit in Dianbai county of Maoming, Guangdong province September 24, 2008. A powerful typhoon ploughed into a densely populated area of ...
