The national disaster response agency said Thursday that heavy rains and floods that devastated parts of the Philippines over the Christmas weekend killed at least 32 people and left 24 missing.
After bad weather disrupted Christmas celebrations in the eastern, central, and southern Philippines, more than 56,000 people remained in emergency shelters.
Images from the southern province of Misamis Occidental showed rescuers wading through a flooded street while carrying an elderly woman on a plastic chair. Some residents in the province were seen clinging to floaters as coast guard rescuers used a rope to pull them across chest-high floodwaters.
The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council reported that 18 of the 32 deaths occurred in Northern Mindanao, while 22 of the 24 people missing were from Eastern Visayas in the central Philippines and the eastern Bicol region.
According to the agency, the majority of the deaths were caused by drowning, while the missing included fishermen whose boats capsized.
The floods damaged over 4,000 homes, as well as roads and bridges, and some areas were without power or water, according to the agency.
Rains were caused by a shear line, which is the point where warm and cold air meet, according to the state weather bureau. It is expected to rain lightly to heavily in the next 24 hours in some of the same areas affected by the floods.
