MANILA, December 2 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Some 1,000 people were reported dead or missing after a series of powerful storms triggered landslides and floods across the Philippines, rescuers said Thursday, December 2, as a new and even more powerful deadly typhoon approached the main island of Luzon.

Army rescuers listed 306 dead and 152 missing from the main island of Luzon, which was flattened by floods and an avalanche of mud and logs, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported.

The eastern coast of Luzon braced for the fury of Typhoon Nanmadol on Thursday as the cyclone killed about eight people, tore down power lines and at least one bridge and hampered rescuers trying to reach victims of Monday's storm.

Meteorologists said the tropical storm was just off the east coast of Luzon on Thursday evening, moving northwest at 35 kilometers (21.7 miles) per hour with the eye passing close to the Real city.

The typhoon, with a radius of 800 kilometers (49.6 miles), is expected to be 160 kilometers (99.2 miles) north of Infanta by Friday morning.

The typhoon has already struck Catanduanes island in Bicol region with 100km/h (62mph) winds.

A Filipino soldier falls down through a landslide affected area near Real in Quezon province

A total of 131 corpses have been found in the nearby town of General Nakar with about 100 residents still missing, while 47 died in the town of Infanta and about 100 are missing, according to an army tally.

Air and sea rescue operations for the victims of the storm that hit Real and nearby areas on Monday were suspended due to high winds and low cloud cover, the air force and navy said.

Some 97 bloated bodies were unearthed by volunteers from a beach house in the village of Tignoan on Real's outskirts. The victims were buried by mud from a nearby mountain on Monday.

“We are digging with spades and our bare hands” because heavy equipment could not get through due to collapsed bridges and roads buried by landslides, said the volunteers’ team leader Mario Nanola.

“There are no body bags available. The stench is unbearable,” he told AFP, quoting survivors as saying that more bodies were afloat at the coast.

Most of the dead were drowned, buried by mudslides or electrocuted.

Rivers of dirt-brown water swept away houses, overturned cars and smashed bridges.

Philippine Health Secretary Manuel Dayrit earlier urged the hard-hit communities to quicklybury rotting corpses recovered from under the mud and floating on the coast and along swollen rivers to prevent epidemics.

“As much as possible, the bodies should be buried as soon as possible,” he said.

Lime has been sent to flood-hit communities to try to preserve some of the dead so they may be identified before burial but there may not be enough preservative to go around, he said.

Trying to relieve the toll of the disaster on the Asian country, the United States provided an initial 100,000 dollars to the local Red Cross to help storm victims while Japan said it was sending about 15 million pesos (266,500 dollars) worth of aid to the relief effort.

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICCEF), UN Food and Drug Organization, and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) also pledged 200,000 dollar worth of foodstuff and relief items for the Philippine victims.