Manila:

As the death toll from Tropical Storm Trami reached 100, rescue teams in the Philippines were diving into a lake and scouring isolated villages on Sunday, locating dozens of missing people.

Trami, which hit the Philippines on October 24, was among the deadliest storms to hit the Southeast Asian country this year.

More than half a million people have been forced to flee their homes and at least 36 people remain missing, according to the national disaster agency.

Police in the hardest-hit Bicol region recorded 38 deaths, most from drowning.

“We are still receiving a lot of calls and we are trying to save as many people as possible,” Bicol regional police chief Andre Dizon told AFP.

“Hopefully there won’t be any more deaths.”

Dizon added that “many residents” in Camarines Sur district were still trapped on rooftops and in the upper floors of their homes.

The death toll in Batangas, south of Manila, has risen to 55, provincial police chief Jacinto Malinao told AFP.

Two people died in separate electrocution and drowning incidents in Cavite province, police said.

According to AFP’s calculation based on official police and disaster agency sources, five more bodies were found in other provinces, bringing the total number to 100.

“A higher death toll is possible in the coming days as rescuers are now able to reach previously isolated places,” Edgar Posadas of the Civil Protection Office told AFP.

Police, the coast guard and a Marine Corps dive team were searching for a family of seven at Taal Lake in Batangas on Sunday.

“Water coming from the mountains hit their house in the town of Balete, possibly causing the house to be swept away along with the people inside,” state police chief Malinao said.

Most of the deaths in Batangas are attributed to landslides caused by rain.

While more than 20 bodies were pulled from mud piles, rocks and fallen trees, police said at least 20 people were still missing in the state.

“We will continue to search until all the bodies are found,” Malinao said.

Nearly 560,000 people have been displaced by floods that have inundated hundreds of villages in the northern Philippines, the national disaster agency said Sunday.

About 20 major storms and typhoons hit the archipelago country or surrounding waters every year, damaging homes and infrastructure and killing dozens of people.

A recent study showed that due to climate change, storms in the Asia-Pacific region are increasingly forming closer to coastlines, intensifying faster and lasting longer over land.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is syndicated.)