A total of 79 people have been killed, more than 115 others injured and 86 missing after two storms hit the northern, central and western Philippines in a week,the government said Wednesday.

The Philippine National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) report said floods and landslides from Tuesday's "Violeta" tropical depression killed 18 people, injured 14 others and left six others missing in Nueva Ecija and Aurora provinces in the northern Philippines.

Storm-battered Oriental Mindoro was placed under a state of calamity, the NDCC said.

Last week's tropical storm "Unding" with an international codename of Muifa left 61 people dead, 80 fishermen missing and injured 101 others before roaring off toward southern Vietnam, it added.

The two storms smashed nearly 34,000 houses and displaced more than 314,000 people, the government agency said.

Earlier reports said that damage to infrastructure has reached 207 million pesos (3.7 million US dollars), to agriculture 122 million pesos (2.19 million dollars) and to fishery 53 million pesos (946,430 dollars), it added.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, en route to Manila via the United States after attending a Pacific Rim summit in Chile and visiting Mexico, is monitoring the rescue and relief operations, Philippine Press Secretary and Presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye told local radio by telephone from Los Angeles.

About 20 typhoons or storms hit the Southeast Asian archipelagoevery year, claiming an annual average of about 500 lives.

Source: Xinhua