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Philippine typhoon death toll exceeds 10,000

334038_Philippine-typhoon

The death toll from super typhoon Haiyan is rapidly on the rise and authorities warn it could soar well over 10,000, Philippine officials say.

Local authorities said on Sunday that at least three hundred people had been confirmed dead and another 2,000 were reported missing on Sahmar Island in the central Philippines.

The confirmed death toll is in addition to 10,000 people believed to have died in the eastern Tacloban city on Leyte Island.

The death toll is rapidly on the rise in the Southeast Asian country with more bodies uncovered from the debris in the onslaught of the super typhoon.

In some areas, mobs have attacked trucks loaded with food, tents and water. Hundreds of police officers and soldiers have been deployed to restore order.

Haiyan, possibly one of the most powerful typhoons on record that has stricken the Philippines, trampled houses, triggered landslides and floods and cut off power and communications in six central Philippine islands on Friday.

“This is destruction on a massive scale. There are cars thrown like tumbleweed and the streets are strewn with debris,” said Sebastian Rhodes Stampa, the head of the UN disaster assessment coordination team, in Tacloban.

“The last time I saw something of this scale was in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami,” he said, referring to the 2004 disaster that claimed about 220,000 lives.

Philippine Red Cross Chairman Richard Gordon said the agency and its partners are prepared to perform a major relief effort because of the magnitude of the disaster.

An average of 20 typhoons hit the Philippines every year. In December 2011, Typhoon Washi claimed the lives of 1,200 people, displaced 300,000 and destroyed more than 10,000 homes.

Typhoon Bopha last year flattened three coastal towns on the southern island of Mindanao, killing 1,100 people and causing damage estimated at USD 1.04 billion.

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