At least 200 people have been killed and scores are missing in the southern Philippines after a tropical storm triggered severe flooding and landslides that also wrecked Christmas for tens of thousands of survivors.

Police said 144 people remained missing while more than 40,000 had fled their homes to evacuation camps as Tembin roared out into the South China Sea early Sunday.

A total of 70,000 have been displaced or otherwise affected by the storm according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), which warned that continued heavy rain could hamper the search for survivors.

Tropical Storm Tembin has lashed the nation's second-largest island of Mindanao since Friday, triggering flash floods and mudslides. Romina Marasigan of the government's disaster-response agency said most of the deaths are in the hard-hit provinces of Lanao del Norte and Lanao del Sur and on the Zamboanga Peninsula.

Officials were getting more details to validate the reported casualties, Marasigan said. It's the latest disaster to hit the Philippines, which is battered by about 20 typhoons and storms each year, making the archipelago that lies on the Pacific typhoon belt one of the world's most disaster-prone countries. But Mindanao, home to 20 million people, is rarely hit by these cyclones.

Rescuers retrieved 36 bodies from the Salog River in Mindanao on Saturday, as officials reported more fatalities in the impoverished Zamboanga peninsula.

The bodies were swept downriver from a flooded town upstream called Salvador, Rando Salvacion, the Sapad town police chief, told AFP. Authorities in Salvador said they had retrieved 17 other bodies upstream.

Salvador and Sapad are in Lanao del Norte, which is one of the provinces hardest hit by Tembin.

The death toll for the Zamboanga peninsula also rose to 28, and police said 81 people were missing after mud and rocks swept down coastal communities in Sibuco and other fishing towns. Mayor Bong Edding of Sibuco said by phone that a search and rescue operation was underway for more than 30 people swept away by flash floods in the fishing village of Anungan. Five bodies have been recovered so far in the village.

"The floodwaters from the mountain came down so fast and swept away people and houses," Edding said. "It's really sad because Christmas is just a few days away, but these things happen beyond our control."

Edding blamed years of logging in the mountains near Anungan for the tragedy that unfolded Friday, adding that he and other officials would move to halt the logging operations.

Thousands of villagers moved to emergency shelters and thousands more were stranded in airports and seaports after the coast guard prohibited ferries from venturing out in the rough seas and several flights were canceled.

An inter-island ferry sank off northeastern Quezon province Thursday after being lashed by fierce winds and big waves, leaving at least five dead. More than 250 passengers and crewmen were rescued.

Tembin, locally known as Vinta, was packing maximum sustained winds of 80 kilometers (50 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 95 kph (59 mph), and is forecast to blow away from the southern Philippines on Sunday toward the South China Sea, moving closer to Vietnam.

"It is unfortunate that another tropical cyclone, Vinta, made its presence felt so near Christmas," presidential spokesman Harry Roque Jr. said, adding that food packs and other aid were being distributed in storm-hit communities.

Earlier in the week, Tropical Storm Kai-Tak left 54 people dead and 24 others missing, mostly due to landslides, and damaged more than 10,000 houses in the central Philippines before weakening and blowing into the South China Sea.

Among the areas battered by Tembin was Marawi, a lakeside city in Lanao del Sur that is still recovering from a five-month siege by pro-Daesh group terrorists that left more than 1,000 people dead.

The deadliest typhoon to hit the country was Haiyan, which killed thousands and destroyed entire towns in heavily populated areas of the central Philippines in November 2013.

Tembin is expected to hit the tip of the western island of Palawan late Saturday, the state weather service said.