MANILA, Dec 13 (AFP) - The death toll from a powerful earthquake that struck the main Philippine island of Luzon rose to six with the number of injured rising to at least 40, disaster relief agencies and newspapers said here Monday.

Four people ranging in age from 60 to 80, died of heart attacks during the quake, the civil defense office said while a 59 year-old man died of a heart attack on his way to a Manila hospital, newspapers said.

An 11 year-old girl was also crushed by a falling wall caused by the quake that hit Luzon before dawn Sunday.

Manila (dpa) - Philippine Defence Secretary Orlando Mercado said Monday the government's disaster preparedness programme helped minimize casualties in a powerful earthquake that rocked northern provinces over the weekend and left five people dead.

Mercado said the government's call for regular fire and earthquake drills in public buildings since September, after the devastating tremor in Taiwan, have kept various hospitals and other establishments on their toes.

He noted the orderly conduct of doctors, nurses, and even patients at the government-run Philippine General Hospital

Afghanistan
Afghanistan has suffered appallingly through 19 years of civil war and subsequently has some of the worst indicators of human development in the world. The Taliban, an Islamic Fundamentalist party currently control 90% of the country, including the capital Kabul. Their government is not officially internationally recognised and President Rabbani, overthrown by the Taliban, still has a seat at the UN. In the north and the east of the country, warlords have joined together to form the Northern Alliance, fighting the Taliban before each rainy season.

IP/99/675
Brussels, 14 September 1999 - The European Commission has approved a total of euro 3.1 million worth of humanitarian aid, euro 1.1 million for China and euro 2 million for South East Asia. The aid will be administered by ECHO, the European Community Humanitarian Office, and will be used to finance projects by various non-governmental organisations and international relief bodies over the next six months.

China: aid for flood victims (euro 1.1 million)

800 people have died and a further 24 000 have been left injured as a result of the torrential rainfall which

Appeal Target: US$ 79,555
Geneva, 20 August 1999

Dear Friends,

A wide swathe of devastating rains swept across Asia at the end of July and first week of August this year. This weather aberration did not spare the Philippines where the highest amount of rainfall in a year fell within four days! Four rice producing regions on the island of Luzon bore the brunt of the floods with destruction to farmlands amounting to PhP 585 million. The National Disaster Coordinating Council currently documents about 2.15 million people affected. Death

Geneva, 16 August 1999
Over the past few weeks, ACT Members have been reporting on the extensive inundations across Europe, Asia and even Africa.

AFRICA

Sudan

Sudan Council of Churches informs ACT that heavy rain has been falling since 1 August 1999 causing the relocation of internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in Wad El-Bashir and El-Salama. Buildings have collapsed and the numbers of homeless have consequently increased. The rain continues in many parts of Khartoum causing ever more suffering and homelessness.

ASIA

China

ACT Member, Amity Foundation reports

Flood alarm in Sudan
Severe flooding in Sudan, caused by unusually heavy and early rains, has left at least 22 people dead, destroyed or damaged more than 10,000 homes and left 50,000 people in urgent need of assistance. Levels of major rivers are exceedingly high for this time of year, and, with the rainy season having barely begun, the scale of the disaster is alarming.

Warning that more severe inundation is likely in the weeks to come, the International Federation says river levels have reached those that heralded the floods of 1988 and 1998, the worst

MANILA, Aug 11 (AFP) - The death toll in landslides and floods caused by heavy monsoon rains in the Philippines last week mounted to 160 as more bodies were recovered from a housing estate buried by a mudslip, officials said Wednesday.

Fifty seven corpses have been extricated so far from the rubble of the Cherry Hills housing development outside Manila, with only seven now listed as missing, the National Disaster Coordinating Council said.

It said that 103 other fatalities were reported in the capital and in other parts of the main island of Luzon.

Manila (dpa) - Rescuers said Tuesday chances of finding more survivors from a collapsed residential subdivision east of Manila were already ''very slim'' as the death toll from the Philippines' worst rains in 25 years reached 150.

At least 19 more residents of the Cherry Hill subdivision in the mountainous city of Antipolo, Rizal province, east of Manila, are still missing.

While hundreds of rescuers from the military and other civic groups continued to manually sift through soil, boulders, collapsed concrete walls and twisted steel, officials acknowledged the