Hopes were raised and then dashed today that 50 survivors had been pulled from a Philippine school three days after they had been buried in a landslide.
"We have yet to recover any survivor," a spokesman for US marines taking part in the rescue operation, told the ABS-CBN television channel.
He contradicted an earlier report from a Philippine government official who told the station that US forces had unearthed about 50 people from the rubble at a school in Guinsaugon, a remote farming community about 675 kilometres southeast of Manila with a population of about 1,800.
Friday's devastating landslide, triggered by two weeks of heavy rain, obliterated the village.
But rescuers, including US marines dispatched from annual Philippine military exercises, focused efforts on the packed elementary school after unconfirmed reports that some of the 253 people trapped inside had sent desperate text messages on Friday.
So far, 84 bodies have been recovered from the village. Relatives have reported 1,371 villagers still missing.
Rescue workers, including teams from Taiwan and Malaysia, are battling deep, shifting mud and driving rain and have been told to tread softly for fear of drowning in the soupy earth.
In hospital, survivors told of jumping from roofs to escape the torrent of mud, which was set off by two weeks of heavy rain. One six-year-old girl survived by clinging to a coconut tree.
A three-year-old girl, among the first to be saved on Friday, died in hospital from injuries, television station ANC said.
Fifty recovered bodies were buried on Sunday in mass graves sprinkled with holy water and lime powder - a measure Health Secretary Francisco Duque said was necessary to prevent disease from spreading in the hot, fetid conditions.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo plans to visit the scene on Wednesday or Thursday.
International agencies have also sent supplies, but many of the emergency goods must be trucked to the area on bad roads and around washed-out bridges.