Boats bring Philippine flood victims to safety as death toll rises

An aerial view shows wooden boats docked along a flooded street in Calumpit town, Bulacan province, north of Manila.[AFP]

Rescuers in the northern Philippine used boats to pick up residents stranded by flooding on Friday as Typhoon Co-May was downgraded to a tropical storm and the death toll from a week of monsoon rains edged higher.

Schools remained closed and electricity was down in swathes of the archipelago nation's largest island as the national disaster agency reported 25 dead and eight missing since last Friday.