Sharjah24 – AFP: The death toll from a storm that triggered landslides and flash floods across the Philippines has risen to at least 19, authorities said Thursday, linking the extreme rainfall to climate change.
Severe Tropical Storm Kompasu dumped more than a month's worth of rain in two days as it swept across the archipelago nation this week, national disaster agency spokesman Mark Timbal said.
Kompasu, named after the Japanese pronunciation of "compass", intensified the southwest monsoon that had already saturated swathes of the disaster-prone country.
Provinces on the most populous island of Luzon were hardest hit by the storm, which caused more than a billion pesos ($20 million) worth of damage to the agriculture sector and damaged hundreds of homes.
Timbal said the rainfall was "even greater than the Ondoy experience", referring to the devastating Typhoon Ketsana, known in the Philippines as Tropical Storm Ondoy, that hit in 2009 and claimed hundreds of lives.
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