North Korea's prime minister has inspected flood-hit areas, state media said Tuesday, a day after it reported dozens of casualties and widespread damage.

Premier Choe Yong-Rim inspected areas of South Hwanghae province in the country's southwest and held a meeting on efforts to repair the damage, the official KCNA news agency said.

He underscored the need to get people's livelihoods in afflicted areas back to normal as soon as possible, it said, without giving the date of the visit.

The agency said Monday that a tropical storm and heavy rain over the past two months had left dozens dead, injured or missing and destroyed 2,900 homes.

Some 8,000 homeless were living in makeshift buildings, it said.

From late June to mid-July, nearly 60,000 hectares (148,200 acres) of farmland was submerged or washed away, raising concerns about this year's grain harvest, it said.

North Korea has relied heavily on international aid to feed its 24 million people since natural disasters and mismanagement sparked a 1990s famine in which hundreds of thousands died.

After decades of deforestation to create land for arable farming and provide firewood, the impoverished North is particularly vulnerable to flooding. In 2007 it reported at least 600 dead or missing due to such conditions.

earlier related report
Toll from two Philippine storms rises to 70
Manila (AFP) Aug 2, 2011 - The combined death toll from Tropical Storm Nock-ten and Typhoon Muifa in the Philippines has risen to 70, with threats of yet another storm in the rain-battered country, the government said Tuesday.

The toll, previously at 54, rose as two children were reported killed by a landslide at a quarry on the central island of Bohol on Sunday and another 14 victims were logged from Nock-ten, which hit last month.

A total of 178 passengers and crew were rescued from a listing ship off the central port of Iloilo on Sunday, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said.

Muifa, named after a Chinese flower, stayed offshore on the Philippine Sea east of the main island of Luzon, but caused heavy rains and rough coastal waters. On Thursday it tipped over a boat on Manila Bay, causing two fishpond workers on board to drown.

Nock-ten, which struck Luzon a few days earlier, left 66 people dead and 17 others missing, according to the council's updated toll.

Most Manila schools declared a holiday Tuesday as another weather disturbance loomed over Luzon's west coast with the potential to develop into a storm, prompting the state weather service to forecast heavy rain and possible flooding.

An average of 20 storms and typhoons, many of them deadly, hit the Philippines annually. Nock-ten, named after a Laotian bird, was the 10th this year, and Muifa the 11th.

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