Tacloban: One of the most powerful typhoons in history is believed to have killed 1,200 people in the Philippines, the Red Cross said today, as rescue workers raced to reach towns devastated by tsunami-like waves.
A day after Super Typhoon Haiyan whipped across the central Philippines with maximum sustained winds of around 315 kilometres an hour, a picture emerged of entire communities having been flattened.
Authorities said that, aside from the ferocious winds, storm surges of up to three metres high that swept into coastal towns and deep inland were responsible for destroying countless homes.
"Imagine a strip one kilometre deep inland from the shore, and all the shanties, everything, destroyed," Interior Secretary Mar Roxas said after visiting coastal towns in Leyte, one of the worst-hit provinces in the east of the archipelago.
