The death toll due to the landslide in Maco, Davao de Oro rose to 71 while 47 remain missing as the government shifted to search and retrieval operations starting Wednesday.

"We have a total of 71 retrieved bodies and body parts. So for the unidentified bodies, there are a total of 17, in which the seventeen are situated in funeral homes," Lea Anora, a member of the Management of the Dead and Missing (MDM) unit of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) said.

"And then we have a total number of missing individuals, 47, but later on hopefully after we finalize this, the number of missing victims will go down," she added.

Ferdinand Dobli, Apex Mining community relations manager who is also the incident commander, said the search, rescue and retrieval (SRR) efforts have shifted to search and retrieval operations.

"Executive Order Number 15 was already issued shifting our operations from SRR to search and retrieval," he said.

Based on the latest update there are a total of 1,345 families or 4,572 individuals remaining at the evacuation centers because of the landslide.Robina Asido/DMS