BOGO - The death toll from a powerful earthquake in the central Philippines rose to 72 on Thursday, officials said, as the search for the missing wound down and rescuers turned their focus to the hundreds injured and thousands left homeless.
The bodies of the three victims were pulled from the rubble of a collapsed hotel overnight Wednesday in the city of Bogo, near the epicentre of the 6.9-magnitude quake that struck on Tuesday.
"We have zero missing, so the assumption is all are accounted for," National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council spokesman Junie Castillo said, adding that some rescue units in Cebu province have been told to "demobilise".
The government said 294 people were injured and around 20,000 had fled their homes. Nearly 600 houses were wrecked across the north of Cebu and many are sleeping on the streets as hundreds of aftershocks shake the area.
"One of the challenges is the aftershocks. It means residents are reluctant to return to their homes, even those houses that were not (structurally) compromised," Castillo said.
Cebu provincial governor Pamela Baricuatro appealed for help on Thursday, saying thousands needed safe drinking water, food, clothes and temporary housing, as well as volunteers to sort and distribute aid.
President Ferdinand Marcos flew to Cebu with senior aides on Thursday to inspect the damage.
He also visited a partially damaged housing project in Bogo, built for survivors of the 2013 Super Typhoon Haiyan, one of the deadliest natural calamities to hit the Philippines.
Eight bodies were "recovered from collapsed houses" in the project following the quake, a local government statement said.