MANILA, Philippines (AFP) - More than 90 people were killed in a series of landslides brought about by heavy rains in mountainous provinces of the northern Philippines, local officials said on Friday.

Sixty-nine people died in Benguet province as landslides struck on Thursday night and Friday morning in five different towns, provincial governor Nestor Fongwan said.

In the mountain resort city of Baguio, 17 people were killed as landslides buried whole houses in different parts of the city, said city administrator and civil defence official Peter Fianza.

A landslide also left five dead and 32 missing in Mountain Province, said provincial governor Maximo Dulag.

The northern Philippines has been pounded by heavy rain since Typhoon Parma hit the country on Saturday and which had already claimed 25 lives over the past week, the civil defence office said.

Parma followed tropical storm Ketsana which dumped the heaviest rains in more than four decades on the nation's capital, Manila, two weeks ago.

The death toll from Ketsana is now at 337, the civil defence office has said, up nearly 40 from the previous assessment with a further thirty seven people still missing.