MANILA, Philippines?Relief effort on Sunday shifted to northern provinces devastated by floods and cut off by landslides with rescue teams using shovels and bare hands to avoid triggering more avalanches while searching for scores buried in the debris.

?The most important thing is to open roads so we can send relief goods because we cannot hope to find alternate routes,? Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro Jr. said in a TV interview.

?We have a massive push using our assets?the Armed Forces, Coast Guard, police, and the US forces are in the north,? he added.

US troops holding military exercises sent a C130 transport plane and three Chinook helicopters to help bring food and medicines to Baguio City and nearby areas cut off by landslides.

?As of now, food and relief materials can only be delivered by helicopters because it will take two to five days to clear up roads and bridges washed out by floods and landslides,? said Lt. Col. Ernesto Torres of the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC).

?We are now slowly diverting our attention from rescue operations to disaster relief operations,? said Lt. Col. Romeo Brawner Jr., Armed Forces spokesperson.

Olive Luces, head of the Office of Civil Defense in the Cordillera Administrative Region, said the main access roads to Baguio City were still cut off by landslides, with boulders twice as high as commuter vans blocking the winding highway snaking through the mountains.

Death toll

The latest NDCC report placed the death toll from Tropical Storm ?Pepeng? (international codename: Parma) which hit northern Luzon a week ago at 198 dead and 46 missing. But civil defense officials in the Cordillera listed 254 dead in Benguet, Baguio and Mountain Province as of Sunday.

The death toll could still go up as relief and rescue operations continued in landslide-hit provinces, Torres said. ?The search and retrieval operations could still take two more weeks.?

Besides setting off landslides in the mountains, rains dumped by Pepeng have swollen rivers and reservoirs, forcing dams used for hydropower and irrigation to release water and causing more flooding in areas downstream.

Pepeng, then a typhoon, first struck on Oct. 3 and hovered over northwestern Luzon throughout the week before weakening to a tropical storm and moving out to sea.

The floods and mudslides came two weeks after Tropical Storm ?Ondoy? (international codename: Ketsana) inundated areas in and around Metro Manila, killing 337 people and forcing half a million from their homes. Another 37 were still missing and 308 injured.

US humanitarian aid

Brawner said about 150 US soldiers were participating in the relief effort in the north.

The Americans are part of the contingent participating in two bilateral military exercises set on Wednesday, he told the Inquirer.

The exercises were initially scheduled to begin last week but the US Armed Forces had agreed to give way to more humanitarian activities to help the overwhelmed government extend relief to the hundreds of thousands affected by the back-to-back storms.

?Definitely there will be an extension of the US Armed Forces? humanitarian assistance and disaster relief but as to how long this will be, there is no definite date,? Brawner said. ?It will be dependent on the needs in the affected areas.?

In coordination with the NDCC and the Department of Social Welfare and Development, the AFP and the US also sent Sunday 7-tonner trucks carrying 16 tons of relief goods to Lingayen, Pangasinan

?Aside from this, joint AFP-US medical and dental missions will be carried out in the towns of Rosales, Villasis and Asingan in Pangasinan,? Brawner said.

Little food and gas

In response to a Philippine request, about 700 American Marines and sailors were on hand to help out, said Marine Capt. Jorge Escatell.

The helicopters flew to San Fernando in La Union, where US troops picked up about 10 tons of food that will be delivered to Baguio, Escatell said.

The floods and landslides killed at least 53 people in Baguio. Rescuers continued to dig through a huge mound of mud in Crescencia village in search of more than 10 missing residents, said Senior Supt. Agrifino Javier, the Baguio police chief.

While the weather has cleared, the city of more than 300,000 people faced dwindling food and gasoline supplies. Repair crews scrambled to remove landslides blocking Kennon road to allow in fresh supplies.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo managed to fly in by helicopter Sunday to check the situation, officials said.

?There is nearly zero gasoline supply now, and we?re running low on food,? Javier told The Associated Press by telephone, adding many foreign tourists were among those stranded in the city.

Police, miners join search

In Benguet province, police and volunteer gold miners pulled more bodies overnight from houses buried by mudslides late Thursday and early Friday, bringing the province-wide death toll to 158. At least 20 people remain missing, said Senior Supt. Loreto Espineli, the Benguet police chief.

Most of the dead were recovered in a mountainside community called Little Kibungan, where tons of mud and floodwaters buried or swept away houses as people slept late Thursday after a week of pounding rain, Espineli said.

Food supply was not a problem in Benguet, regarded as the country?s ?salad bowl? for its vegetable farms.

Social Welfare Secretary Esperanza Cabral said the government had sent tons of food, medicines and clothes to a military base in the north but delivery to affected communities was slow.

?There is a significant number of people affected,? Cabral said. ?Our problem is getting to them.?

Highways impassable

Many highways remained impassable to all types of vehicles in Tarlac and Pangasinan, with flood waters unable to empty out into the Lingayen Gulf because of high tides.

Television footage shot by rescuers showed houses, malls and factories submerged in a vast sea of brown water, with rescuers plucking survivors off trees and rooftops the past two days.

The flooding was largely due to heavy rains and water released by the authorities from two dams that were in danger of bursting. With reports from Jocelyn R. Uy, Reuters, Associated Press, Agence France-Presse