Flood survivors crowd aid centres

Hundreds of thousands of exhausted survivors from the deadly floods in the Philippines have continued to cram into makeshift shelters as relief workers struggle to cope with demand.

Schools, gymnasiums, churches and government buildings have all been transformed into temporary relief centres, with food, fresh water and clothing in short supply.

According to the government at least 246 people are now known to have died, with dozens of others still missing from the floods triggered by torrential rains unleashed by tropical storm Ketsana at the weekend.

On Wednesday officials said that latest figures showed some two million people had been affected by the floods, with hundreds of thousands of people crammed into temporary evacuation centres in Manila and the surrounding region.

"More people are coming in by the hour… we don't know how long we will be able to sustain this," Joe Ferrer, a local government official at one of the shelters said.

"We need clothing, food supplies, food rations and medicine."

The government has declared a "state of calamity" in Manila and 25 storm-hit provinces.

Large parts of Manila and the neighbouring areas remain submerged [Reuters]

On Tuesday, part of the Philippine president's official residence was opened as a relief centre for victims.

"We're responding to the extent we can to this once-in-a-lifetime typhoon emergency," Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the Philippine president, said in a statement.

Ketsana dumped over a month of rain in just 12 hours on Saturday, leaving most parts of Manila and neighbouring areas submerged, in places under several metres of water.

The flooding was worst around the Pasig River that cuts through the capital, one of the world's largest cities with a population of about 12 million.

Officials estimate losses caused by the floods to total nearly $100m and economists have said the impact of the disaster will be felt for many months to come.

Foreign governments and UN agencies have already pledged some $200m in aid.

But authorities could face more trouble as another tropical storm, Parma, is expected to become a full-blown typhoon by Friday as it passes east of the Philippines bringing more heavy rains to the area.