Repeat mudslide feared, toll 1,800

Hopes were fading fast for finding anyone alive in the 100-acre stretch of mud that was 30 feet deep in places.

8220;No one alive has been found today, only the dead,8221; said Joselito Rabi, a provincial social worker.

Efforts focused on a swamped school, with President Gloria Arroyo citing unconfirmed reports that around 250 students and teachers sent messages from their cell phone to relatives that they had survived.

The search was complicated by heavy morning downpours, the threat that the adjacent mountain remained unstable and the possibility that 752 troops, firefighters and volunteers could get sucked down into the soft, shifting mud.