The death.toll from two weeks of unprecedented storms across the northern Philippines soared past 540 yesterday after landslides consumed homes and neckdeep floods inundated towns.

At least 181 people were killed in a series of rain-triggered landslides overnight Thursday and on Friday in mountainous regions of die Philippines main island of Luzon, officials in those areas reported.

Meanwhile, the downstream farming plains of central Luzon were inundated with waters (hat reached two storeys high after dams in the mountains could not hold the phenomenal amount of water that has fallen on the region.

"The rains in this area are unprecedented,” the executive officer of the National Disaster Coordinating Council. Glen Rabonza, told AFP

"We are stretched, no doubt, but we are responding in the best way we can."

The crisis showed no signs of easing as tropica) storm Parma, responsible for the past week of rains, continued to hover just off Luzon.

Further south on Luzon in the nation's capital, Manila, nearly 300,000 homeless survivors were packed into makeshift evacuation camps following record rains on September 26 that killed at least 337 people.

The worst of the overnight landslides appeared to be in remote Benguet province, where 120 people were confirmed killed in five towns, said provincial governor Nestor Fongwan.

Another 38 people were

confirmed killed in the mountain resort town of Baguio, officials there said.

Across all of the northern Philippines, the confirmed death toll from the landslides was 181.

This was on top of the 25 people killed earlier by Parma in northern Luzon.

In the farming region of Pangasinan province to the southwest of the provinces where the landslides occurred, thousands of people were stranded on rooftops in dangerously similar scenes to those in Manila a fortnight ago.

Days of rain from Parma forced authorities to open the gates on five dams, sending water cascading through dozens of towns in Pangasinan, which has a population of 2.5 million people.