TUGUEGARAO CITY, Cagayan, Philippines—Three people drowned as floods spawned by continuous rains since Tuesday swamped houses in low-lying villages in Cagayan province.

Thousands of villagers fled their homes as the swollen Cagayan River and its tributaries threatened to further inundate this city yesterday.

The body of one of the drowning victims, Ama Cawilan, was recovered by rescuers on Friday night. Cawilan refused to leave his house that was later swept away by rampaging floodwaters in a village here, according to accounts.

The two other drowning victims remained unidentified.

Waters from the Cagayan River also partly flooded the towns of Amulung, Solana, Enrile, Lallo, Alcala and Camalaniugan. Two landslides swept down on Gattaran and Penablanca towns but there were no reports of casualties, police said.

Tuguegarao Mayor Delfin Ting called for a special meeting of the city council to consider placing the city under a state of calamity.

Gov. Alvaro Antonio directed the province’s social welfare administration to send food packs to the flood-hit towns.

Traffic to Cagayan has been cut off due to the flooding of the national highways. Unharvested palay and farm crops were damaged and hundreds of work animals were lost on farms located near the Cagayan River.

Four members of a family who were trapped in their farmhouse near the river in Barangay Linao here were saved by a rescue team.

In Isabela, farm crops worth at least P35 million were destroyed as rains since Monday raised floodwaters in low-lying villages.

Initial reports said 2,964 hectares of rice farms and 1,752 hectares of corn farms were destroyed in Ilagan, Cabagan, Tumauini, Delfin Albano, Benito Soliven and Roxas towns.

Ilagan suffered the most, with P16.5 million in crops damaged or lost, reports said.

At least 6,000 villagers now crowd eight evacuation sites in the province. Those displaced are mostly from Ilagan, which has at least 37 low-lying villages still submerged in murky floodwaters.

Ilagan Mayor Josemarie Diaz and the town council have placed Ilagan under a state of calamity to allow for the use of calamity funds to help the victims. “We have been doing 24-hour rescue and relief operations,” Diaz said.

Reports from the Ilagan municipal disaster coordinating council said landslides were recorded in barangays San Felipe and Bintacan but these were cleared with the help of soldiers and volunteers.

Some 2,500 relief bags were distributed to affected villagers on Friday while an additional 2,500 bags were given out Saturday.

Despite the floods, Magat Dam officials said there was no cause for alarm as the water in the reservoir was still way below the critical 193-meter level.

Weather reports indicate no immediate end to the rains in the provinces.

The tail-end of a cold front and an intertropical convergence zone are bringing rains to Luzon and Mindanao, respectively, according to the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa).

In its weather bulletin yesterday, Pagasa said the tail-end of the cold front was bringing cloudy skies to Luzon and could scatter rains over thdde region, particularly the eastern sections of northern and Central Luzon.

Also, the surge of the northeast monsoon bringing strong winds is expected to buffet coastal areas of Luzon.

The intertropical convergence zone is also affecting Mindanao and would bring mostly cloudy skies with rain showers and thunderstorms. With a report from Alcuin Papa