One person died and three others were missing in the southern Philippines after being hit by a landslide, police said Thursday, taking the nationwide death toll from recent rains to at least 33.

Authorities were still searching for more than two dozen other people missing after heavy downpours over the Christmas weekend caused flooding and landslides across central and southern regions.

The latest death happened Wednesday in Mati City in the province of Davao Oriental on Mindanao island when a landslide buried four people as they fished, police said.

The body of a 62-year-old man was recovered and the search for his companions was still under way, Mati City police chief Ernesto Gregore told AFP.

"There was a heavy downpour in the mountains. They were fishing in a river when the landslide occurred," Gregore said.

The weather turned bad over the weekend as the disaster-prone nation of 110 million people prepared for a long Christmas holiday.

Hundreds of houses have since been destroyed and more than 5,000 hectares (12,400 acres) of crops wiped out by rains that have forced tens of thousands of people into evacuation centres, the national disaster agency said.

Most fatalities have been in the province of Misamis Occidental, also on Mindanao, where 15 people died from drowning or rain-induced landslides.

The Philippines is ranked among the most vulnerable nations to the impacts of climate change, and scientists have warned that storms are becoming more powerful as the world gets warmer.

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Death toll from Philippine floods rises to 25
Manila (AFP) Dec 28, 2022
The death toll from floods in the Philippines has risen to 25, officials said Wednesday, with storms expected to dump more rain over the hardest-hit southern and central regions. Tens of thousands of people were forced to flee their homes as heavy rain submerged rural villages, towns and highways on Christmas Day, dampening festivities on the most important holiday in the mainly Catholic nation. At least 13 people died, most from drowning, in the province of Misamis Occidental on the southern ... read more