The death toll from the powerful earthquake in the central Philippines has risen to 72, officials reported, as the search for the missing was called off and rescuers shifted their focus to the hundreds injured and thousands left homeless.
The bodies of three victims were pulled from the rubble of a collapsed hotel overnight in the town of Bogo, near the epicenter of the magnitude 6.9 earthquake that struck on Tuesday.
“There are no more missing, so it is assumed that everyone is accounted for,” said Junie Castillo, a spokesperson for the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, adding that some rescue units in Cebu province had been ordered to “demobilize.”
The government stated that 294 people were injured and approximately 20,000 had evacuated their homes.
In northern Cebu, about 600 homes were destroyed, leaving many people sleeping on the streets as the area experienced hundreds of aftershocks.
