Typhoon Haiyan Survivors' Fear And Desperation

Gunshots have reportedly forced the delay of a mass burial of victims of the huge typhoon that smashed into the Philippines.

The mayor of Tacloban, the provincial capital of Leyte province where 16ft waves flattened nearly everything in their path, made the claim on Wednesday.

Alfred Romualdez said: "We had finished digging the mass burial site. We had the truck loaded with bodies but there was some shooting. They could not proceed."

The UN estimates 10,000 people may have died in Tacloban alone

Locals in Tacloban also reported seeing members of the army firing guns, as well as armed civilians in the street.

Meanwhile it has been reported that a 13-year-old boy who was walking alone through the city at night was slashed across the neck and stabbed in the stomach.

Jonathan Salayco said he was attacked by two men he did not know late on Tuesday, who then disappeared without a trace.

Soldiers carry young children on to evacuation flights at Tacloban airport

Red Cross nurse Mina Joset said: "He was still holding his toy car.

"For a boy like him, this is a serious injury."

Five days after Typhoon Haiyan, known locally as Yolanda, ripped apart entire coastal communities, the situation in Tacloban is becoming ever more dire with essential supplies low and increasingly desperate survivors jostling for aid.

An injured typhoon survivor is carried by members of the military

Eight people were crushed to death after a huge crowd of typhoon survivors rushed a government rice warehouse, causing a wall to collapse.

The incident in Alangalang town, 10 miles from Tacloban, underlined the increasing sense of fear and desperation setting in among those battling to survive the aftermath of the typhoon.

Sky News Asia Correspondent Mark Stone said: "Those who survived desperately need help. There is nothing like enough supplies or aid here and there is a depressing lack of co-ordination."

The remains of an orphanage

The international relief effort is building momentum with many countries pledging help. 

The Philippines Government said it had received over £56m in international aid so far and praised the "generous and swift response". 

Supplies of rice are loaded on to a truck, but food remains scarce

UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos also applauded the international community's reaction, but said much more needed to be done in a disaster of such magnitude.

Britain's Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) appeal has reached £13m just 24 hours after it was launched, it was announced on Wednesday.

The US and the UK are sending warships carrying thousands of sailors to the Philippines.

Britain's first flight delivering urgently needed humanitarian aid has arrived, the Government has said.

A chartered Boeing 777 carrying 8,836 shelter kits from UK Government stores in Dubai landed in Cebu City and was met by Department for International Development (DFID) humanitarian workers.

Tacloban's infrastructure was devastated by the typhoon's impact

President Aquino has declared a "state of national calamity", allowing the government to impose price controls and quickly release emergency funds.

The latest official government death toll stands at 2,344, with 3,804 injured and a further 79 missing.

But authorities have said they have not come close to accurately assessing the number of bodies lying amid the rubble or swept out to sea.

The UN estimates 10,000 people may have died in Tacloban alone.

A school in Cebu was reduced to rubble

Health Secretary Enrique Ona admitted authorities were struggling to deal with the sheer numbers of the dead.

He told radio station DZMM they had delayed the retrieval of bodies because "we ran out of body bags".

He said: "We hope to speed it up when we get more body bags."

The UN estimates more than 11.3 million people have been affected with 673,000 made homeless, since Haiyan smashed into the nation's central islands on Friday.

Haiyan's sustained winds when it hit Samar island, where it first made landfall, reached 195 miles an hour, making it the strongest typhoon in the world this year and one of the most powerful ever recorded.

Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang

Typhoon Haiyan Survivors' Fear And Desperation

Dengan url

http://majutakgentarian.blogspot.com/2013/11/typhoon-haiyan-survivors-fear-and.html

Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya

Typhoon Haiyan Survivors' Fear And Desperation

namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link

Typhoon Haiyan Survivors' Fear And Desperation

sebagai sumbernya