MANILA: A strong earthquake in the southern Philippines on Saturday halted a search for scores of people believed buried in a deadly landslide, forcing rescuers to vacate the area, officials said. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage from the magnitude 5.8 quake that shook the Mindanao region at 11:22 am (0322 GMT), but rescuers were ordered to stop their search in the remote gold-mining village of Masara.

A massive landslide buried a bus terminal and 55 houses near an Apex Mining Co gold mine on Tuesday night, killing 28 people, mostly miners, and leaving 32 injured, according to an updated official tally. Hundreds of rescuers are searching for at least 77 people who remain missing and believed buried under the rubble spread over 8.9 hectares (22 acres) at the bottom of a wooded mountain valley.

“We ordered them (rescuers) to go up to a safer area,” Apex Mines official Ferdinand Doble told a news conference. Rescue efforts had not resumed more than 30 minutes later as drones were flown to check for signs of potential secondary landslides that could endanger the lives of the rescuers, he added. The quake epicenter is about 150 kilometers (90 miles) north of the landslide site.

On Friday rescuers found a three-year-old girl alive after nearly 60 hours under the rubble, but mostly they have only been finding bodies. “We’re still hoping to save more people even after four days,” Davao de Oro provincial disaster chief Randy Loy told the news conference. However “we can’t really guarantee their chances of survival” after 48 hours, he said, adding 474 rescuers were deployed at the Masara landslide.

Military rescuers were set to employ specialized equipment, their commander, Brigadier-General Ronnie Babac, told the news conference. These include thermal scanners that can detect signs of life beneath the rubble as well as specialized “snake cameras”, also known as borescopes designed to peek into confined spaces.

Landslides are a frequent hazard across much of the archipelago nation due to the mountainous terrain, heavy rainfall, and widespread deforestation from mining, slash-and-burn farming and illegal logging. Rain has pounded parts of Mindanao on and off for weeks, triggering dozens of landslides and flooding that have forced tens of thousands of people into emergency shelters.

The rescue of a child on Friday nearly 60 hours after a landslide hit a gold-mining village in the southern Philippines has been hailed as a “miracle” after searchers had given up hope of finding more survivors. The girl, who the Philippine Red Cross said was three years old, had been among scores of people missing after the rain-induced landslide hit the village. Officials said later on Friday the death toll had almost doubled to 27. The girl was earlier found as rescuers used their bare hands and shovels to look for survivors in Masara village on southern Mindanao island, disaster agency official Edward Macapili of Davao de Oro province told AFP.

“It’s a miracle,” Macapili said, adding that searchers had believed those missing were probably dead. “That gives hope to the rescuers. A child’s resilience is usually less than that of adults, yet the child survived.” Video of a rescuer carrying the crying, mud-caked child in his arms was shared on Facebook.

“We can see in the social media posts that the child did not have any visible injuries,” Macapili said. He said the girl’s father saw his child before she was taken to a medical facility for a check-up. The Philippine Red Cross posted photos on Facebook of their workers carrying the girl, wrapped in an emergency blanket and hooked up to an oxygen tank, into a hospital in nearby Mawab municipality.

The landslide struck Tuesday night, destroying houses and engulfing three buses and a jeepney waiting to pick up workers from a gold mine. While the death toll increased to 27 from 15, the number of missing fell to 89 from more than 100, official figures showed, as searchers retrieved more bodies. The number of injured also rose to 32.

Rescuers were racing to find anyone else alive in the thick mud as rain fell on Friday. While they were using heavy earth-moving equipment in places, they had to rely on their bare hands and shovels in areas where they believed there were bodies. Sniffer dogs were also used to detect those buried in the mud and rubble.

Three buses and a jeepney buried by the landslide had been found “at ground zero”, Apex Mining, the operator of the mine, said in a statement Friday. Initial reports said at least 20 workers were trapped inside the vehicles. Company spokeswoman Teresa Pacis told AFP that no bodies were found inside the vehicles but several bodies were nearby.

Landslides are a frequent hazard across much of the archipelago nation due to the mountainous terrain, heavy rainfall, and widespread deforestation from mining, slash-and-burn farming and illegal logging. Rain has pounded parts of Mindanao on and off for weeks, triggering dozens of landslides and flooding that have forced tens of thousands of people into emergency shelters. -- AFP