Woman still missing in Cotabato floods

COTABATO CITY — Rescuers were still searching for a woman who went missing after rampaging floodwaters swept away her house, along with 19 others, in a riverside farming village in Makilala, North Cotabato before dawn Friday.

Authorities believe though that Ana Cabaling might have drowned, too, as what happened to her husband, Mario, and their children, Marlon, Merlyn, Mae-Ann and Mikee, whose bodies were fished out far away from their barangay.

The driver of a car that plunged into a river while crossing a washed-out bridge also drowned.

With the bridge connecting the North Cotabato and Davao del Sur destroyed, hundreds of commuters have been stranded.

North Cotabato Gov. Emmanuel Piñol has tasked engineers to rush the repair of the Kisante Bridge. — John Unson