Firemen have found the bodies of "around" 36 people after a deadly blaze at a shopping mall in the southern Philippines, a fire official said Monday.

The regional chief of the Bureau of Fire Protection, Wilberto Rico Neil Kwan Tiu, told weeping relatives of the missing that he personally counted "around 36" bodies in an office lobby at the burned down NCCC shopping mall in Davao.

Mayor Sara Duterte said earlier that 38 people were missing and believed to have died in the fire, with one other unidentified body recovered on Sunday.