A relative holds newly born baby Beatriz as her mother recuperates at a makeshift birthing clinic in Tacloban city in central Philippines, yesterday. Photo: ReutersA relative holds newly born baby Beatriz as her mother recuperates at a makeshift birthing clinic in Tacloban city in central Philippines, yesterday. Photo: Reuters

Survivors in the typhoon-ravaged Philippines have begged the world for help as a massive relief operation struggled to get underway, with bodies lying uncounted in the streets amid shortages of food, water and medicine.

Police guarded shops to prevent looting, but there was often no one to carry away the dead – not even those seen along the main road from the airport to Tacloban, the worst-hit city along the country’s remote eastern seaboard.

Typhoon Haiyan is feared to have killed at least 10,000 people, but with the slow pace of recovery, the official death toll remained well below that.

Yesterday Tacloban resembled a rubbish dump from the air, punctuated only by a few concrete buildings that remained standing.

“I don’t believe there is a single structure that is not destroyed or severely damaged in some way – every single building, every single house,” US Marine General Paul Kennedy said after taking a helicopter flight over the city.

At least two million people in 41 provinces were affected by Haiyan, one of the most powerful recorded typhoons to ever hit land.

“Please tell my family I’m alive,” said Erika Mae Karakot, a survivor on Tacloban’s Leyte island, as she lined up for aid. “We need water and medicine because a lot of the people we are with are wounded. Some are suffering from diarrhoea and dehydration due to shortage of food and water.” Video from Eastern Samar province’s Guiuan township – the first area where the typhoon made landfall – showed a trail of devastation similar to Tacloban. Many houses were flattened and roads were strewn with debris and uprooted trees.

“I have no house, I have no clothes. I don’t know how I will restart my life. I am so confused,” one woman said, crying. “I don’t know what happened to us. We are appealing for help. Whoever has a good heart, I appeal to you – please help Guiuan.”

The UN said it was sending supplies but access to the worst hit areas was difficult.

Around 800,000 people were evacuated ahead of the typhoon, but many centres – brick-and-mortar schools, churches and government buildings – could not withstand the winds and water surges. Those who had huddled in them drowned or were swept away.

The winds, rains and coastal storm surges transformed neighbourhoods into twisted piles of debris, blocking roads and trapping decomposing bodies underneath. Ships were tossed inland, cars and trucks swept out to sea and bridges and ports washed away.

Meanwhile there were worries that aid would not arrive soon enough.

“We’re afraid that it’s going to get dangerous in town because relief goods are trickling in very slow,” said Bobbie Womack, an American missionary and longtime Tacloban resident from Athens, Tennessee. “I know it’s a massive, massive undertaking to try to feed a town of over 150,000 people. They need to bring in shiploads of food.”

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