Mountain mudslides kill up to 200 people

Dozens of landslides in the rain-soaked mountains of the northern Philippines killed up to 200 people yesterday. The latest calamity brings the total death toll to more than 400 in the Philippines' worst flooding for 40 years.

Back-to-back storms started pounding the country's north last month. About 100 people were feared dead in landslides along the Cordillera mountain range, about 125 miles north of Manila. Landslides blocked the roads to the mountain city of Baguio in the heart of the Cordillera region and exact figures were hard to get. In the south, in Pangasinan province, heavy rain prompted authorities to discharge excess water from swollen dams. The resulting deluge inundated 30 towns.