A huge night fire has sent slum dwellers running for their lives and destroyed more than a thousand homes in the Philippines' largest southern city.
Davao city's skyline lit up as firefighters battled for more than five hours against flames that leapt swiftly from one shanty to another in the depressed coastal neighbourhood of Isla Verde on Friday night, witnesses said.
"I'm back to zero. I don't know how I can recover," said grocer Norayna Serad, who lost her store and merchandise worth 100,000 pesos ($A2420) that she had paid for with three years worth of savings from working abroad.
"Maybe I will need to go back to Kuwait and work as a maid again," the 28-year-old told AFP as she clutched a half-burnt Koran beside the ruins of her shop.
The catastrophic blaze was finally brought under control shortly after 1am on Saturday, but by then more than 5000 people were left homeless, local civil defence officials said.
"These were houses made of light materials. They were all razed to the ground," Jimmy Martinez, an official of the civil defence office for the Davao region told AFP.
Martinez added the slum sat on a previously vacant government lot that had been gradually settled by impoverished migrants to the city of 1.5 million people - a common phenomenon in Philippine urban centres.
The blaze was apparently started when a candle in one of the homes tipped over in the early evening, Davao fire investigator Ramil Gillado told AFP.
