Quake Toll Rises; U.S. Marine Killed in Crash : Philippines: The number of dead related to Monday’s temblor climbs to 659. Survivors plead for food and other relief aid.

The death toll from Monday’s earthquake soared to 659, including a U.S. Marine pilot surveying quake damage who was killed Friday when his small observation plane crashed into a wooded mountain outside the devastated city of Baguio.

Another Marine was hurt in the crash, bringing the latest official figures for quake-related injuries to more than 1,300.

The Marines’ OV-10 observation plane crashed about 3 miles southwest of Baguio while surveying what appears to be a broad swath of destruction caused by the quake and more than 384 recorded aftershocks.

Reports reaching Manila indicated huge landslides had damaged scores of isolated villages in Luzon’s northern mountains and had stranded or crushed hundreds of cars, trucks and buses on rural roads. At one place, villagers have chalked the message “We need food!” in a courtyard.

“We’ve got an undetermined number of stranded and dead people out there,” said Mike Gomez, spokesman for the Department of Health.

Although rescue teams continued to burrow through the rubble of the Hyatt Terraces hotel in Baguio, a U.S. team of 21 earthquake experts left the city, where there were at least 224 confirmed dead, and headed for Agoo in the neighboring province of La Union. Agoo’s city hall, public market and a church reportedly collapsed.

“At this point, it’s their belief there aren’t any survivors left in Baguio,” U.S. Embassy spokesman Stanley Schrager said.

Six Air Force C-130 cargo planes ferried food and relief supplies to Baguio and brought out about 400 U.S. citizens and other foreigners. Roads to the city remain blocked.

“We’ve had some reports of measles and typhoid breaking out in some smaller villages,” Schrager said. But Gomez, the Health Department spokesman, said no epidemics had been confirmed, despite daily torrential downpours and poor water supplies.

“What we do have a problem with is tents, blankets and surgical implements,” Gomez said. “Everyone is still outside.”

U.S. officials withheld the name of the dead Marine pilot until his family could be notified. The injured Marine was taken to a hospital at Camp John Hay in Baguio. They had taken off from the U.S. naval base at Subic Bay.

At least one other American was killed in the quake. Richard Finley of Washington, D.C., who was here under contract for the U.S. Agency for International Development, was killed when Baguio’s Nevada Hotel collapsed. At least one Filipino employee of the AID also is missing.

A Philippine woman married to an American was also killed, but U.S. Embassy officials said it was not clear whether she was a U.S. citizen. Her name was not made public.

The U.S. relief operation, led by more than 250 doctors, engineers and others from Subic Bay and Clark Air Base, began within hours after the quake and has overshadowed criticism that the government’s effort has been slow and often disorganized.

President Corazon Aquino must approve all foreign disaster aid coming into the country, and diplomats complained Friday that customs officials have held up emergency communications equipment and other relief supplies pending her approval.

Newspapers and radio commentators questioned whether the American rescue effort would affect talks next month on the future of six U.S. military bases, an emotional issue that colors virtually every public debate here.

One Manila radio station led its noon newscast with a report that Foreign Secretary Raul Manglapus and U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Platt had insisted there were “no strings attached” to the earthquake aid.

“It’s obviously going to have an effect” on the bases talks, a U.S. official said in frustration. “The problem is that every time they get in trouble, they call us.”

He said there were “a lot of parallels” to last December’s attempted coup, when U.S. jets helped save Aquino’s government by pinning down rebel forces. Two months later, Aquino snubbed visiting Defense Secretary Dick Cheney after critics insisted she was beholden to Washington.