"They have reached the rooftop of the school building," Congressman Roger Mercado said late on Sunday as the search ceased for the night. "They will continue to dig and listen for sounds beneath."

Unconfirmed reports some pupils had sent desperate mobile phone text messages initially spurred on the rescue workers. But as daylight faded on Sunday, so had almost all hope.

The National Disaster Coordinating Council said 68 bodies had been pulled from the mud, with 941 villagers still missing.

Fifty recovered bodies were buried on Sunday in mass graves peppered with lime powder - a measure Health Secretary Francisco Duque said was necessary to prevent disease from spreading in the hot, fetid conditions.

"Some bodies are so bloated, they are in such a state of decomposition. But they are being buried in such a way that they can be exhumed later," Duque told Reuters.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was due to tour the scene of the disaster, about 675 km (420 miles) southeast of Manila, on Monday morning.

Although the president had pledged to give families piece of mind by recovering all of the bodies for burial, Mercado said a decision was likely within a few days about closing off the devastated area.

"We will put up a memorial symbol and we will say holy mass for the bereaved victims of the landslide," he said.

At a local hospital, survivors told of jumping from roofs to safe ground to escape the torrent of mud, which was set off by two weeks of heavy rain.

One six-year-old girl survived by clinging to a coconut tree.

The government and international agencies were sending supplies, but many of the emergency goods must be trucked to the area on bad roads and around washed-out bridges.

LIKE QUICKSAND

The Philippines is usually hit by about 20 typhoons each year, with residents and environmental groups often blaming illegal logging or mining for compounding the damage.

Leyte province itself is no stranger to disaster. In 1991, more than 5,000 people died in floods triggered by a typhoon.

Around 2,000 people from villages near Guinsaugon were evacuated over the weekend as Defence Secretary Avelino Cruz warned of potential catastrophe because rains triggered by the La Nina weather pattern were expected to last until June.

On Saturday night, a landslide killed four adults and one child in Zamboanga City on the southern island of Mindanao.

In Guinsaugon, hundreds of rescue workers, backed by 30 US marines dispatched from annual military exercises with Philippine troops, were warned to tread gingerly or risk sinking to their deaths.

"It's like quicksand," Adriano Fuego, director of the Office of Civil Defense, told Reuters.

With little evidence of where the village once stood, search teams relied on sketches from survivors to pinpoint the school and other buildings.

"It's a total disaster, just horrendous," said Lieutenant Joel Coots, a medical officer with the US Marines. "It's very difficult to get to the site because there are just acres and acres of mud and debris."