MANILA: Relief teams are still finding eight to 10 dead bodies a day, more than a month after Super Typhoon Haiyan ravaged the central Philippines, a civil defence official said yesterday.
The number of casualties, which the government placed at 6,057 dead and 1,779 missing, is almost certain to rise, said Rey Gozon, civil defence director for the areas hit hardest by the killer storm.
“For our region, we are still collecting bodies. We are getting an average eight to 10 additional dead bodies every day,” he said.
He also expressed doubt that many of the missing would be found alive, saying so much time had passed since the storm struck with peak winds of 315 kilometres an hour on November 8, flattening whole towns, mainly in the central islands of Samar and Leyte.
The latest official count puts Haiyan nearly on a par with a 1976 tsunami in the southern Philippines, generated by an undersea earthquake in the Moro Gulf, which left between 5,000 and 8,000 people dead.
The Haiyan toll has surpassed Tropical Storm Thelma, which unleashed floods that killed more than 5,100 people in the central city of Ormoc in 1991, previously the country’s deadliest storm.
The government said more than four million people lost their homes to either Haiyan’s winds or tsunami-like storm surges, and some would continue to need food aid as well as shelter and jobs.
President Benigno Aquino has said the country will need nearly $3bn to repair the damage.
AFP
