BOGO:
The death toll from a powerful earthquake in the central Philippines rose to 72 on Thursday, rescuers said, as officials turned their efforts to the hundreds injured and thousands left homeless.
Firefighters and rescuers pulled a woman and her child from the rubble of a collapsed hotel overnight Wednesday in the city of Bogo, near the epicentre of the 6.9-magnitude quake that struck on Tuesday.
The body of another woman was also retrieved from the site earlier in the day, AFP journalists saw.
The national government said 294 people were injured and around 20,000 had fled their homes. Nearly 600 houses were wrecked across the north of Cebu island and many are sleeping on the streets as hundreds of aftershocks shake the area.
Cebu provincial governor Pamela Baricuatro made several urgent appeals for help on Thursday, saying thousands needed safe drinking water, food, clothes and temporary housing, as well as volunteers to sort and distribute aid.
