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.

Tacloban mayor 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."

Eight people have also been 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.

Soldiers carry young children on to evacuation flights at Tacloban airport

On Tuesday Sky correspondent Mark Stone said that 20 people had been killed by falling rice bags.

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

Thousands of people have been begging for seats on flights out of Tacloban as anger at the slow pace of aid reaching the disaster zone turned deadly.

"One wall of our warehouses collapsed and eight people were crushed and killed instantly," said Rex Estoperez, spokesman for the National Food Authority.

An injured typhoon survivor is carried by members of the military

Five days after Haiyan ripped apart entire coastal communities, the situation in Tacloban was becoming ever more dire with essential supplies low and increasingly desperate survivors jostling at the airport.

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."

At the airport, Angeline Conchas, waiting for space on a plane with her seven-year-old daughter Rogiel Ann, said: "We have been here for three days and we still cannot get to fly out." 

Her family were trapped on the second floor of their building as flood waters rose around them.

The remains of an orphanage

They made their way to safety by clinging on to an electricity cable to move to a higher structure where they stayed until the waters subsided.

"It is a good thing the electricity had already been cut off or we would have died," she said.

"We made it out, but now we may die from hunger."

"Everyone is panicking," Captain Emily Chang, a navy doctor, told AFP.

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

"They say there is no food, no water. They want to get out of here," she added, saying doctors at the airport had run out of medicine, including antibiotics.

"We are examining everyone but there's little we can do until more medical supplies arrive."

The United Nations estimates 10,000 people may have died in Tacloban, the provincial capital of Leyte province where 16ft waves flattened nearly everything in their path as they swept hundreds of metres across the low-lying land.

However, Philippine President Benigno Aquino said he believed that toll was "too much", and that the real number may be closer to 2,500.

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

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.

A sense of fear and desperation is growing in the stricken city

Overwhelmed and under-resourced rescue workers have been unable to provide food, water, medicines, shelter and other relief supplies to many survivors, and desperation has been building across the disaster zones.

The international relief effort is building momentum with many countries pledging help. The United States and Britain are sending warships carrying thousands of sailors to the Philippines.

The aircraft carrier USS George Washington, which has 5,000 sailors and more than 80 aircraft on board, is heading from Hong Kong with five other US warships, while three amphibious vessels are also being deployed.

The carrier group is expected to reach the Philippines later this week, the Pentagon said, bringing much needed supplies. 

A school in Cebu was reduced to rubble

Hundreds of soldiers and police have been patrolling the streets and manning checkpoints in Tacloban, trying to keep looting under control.

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

Speaking in a CNN interview, he said that local officials who feared 10,000 had died in Tacloban may have been "too close" to the disaster to give an accurate toll.

"Being in the centre of the destruction... there is emotional trauma associated with that particular estimate," he said.

"The figure I have right now is 2,000... so far about 2,000, 2,500 is the figure we're working on," Aquino added, though he admitted the toll still could rise.

The latest official government death toll stands at 1,798, although authorities have said they have not come close to accurately assessing the number of bodies lying amid the rubble or swept out to sea.

And international aid groups said they feared what was known now was just the tip of the iceberg.

"Obviously the situation in Tacloban is appalling but we are also very concerned about outlying islands," Patrick Fuller, Red Cross spokesman in the Asia-Pacific, told AFP.

"There are a lot of them and I think it will be days, if not weeks, before we have a clear picture."

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.

The UK's first flight delivering urgently needed humanitarian aid to the Philippines has arrived, the Government has said.

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

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