As pressure mounts on the Philippines government to speed up aid distribution, Tacloban’s typhoon-wrecked airport is witnessing a new daily ritual.
Desperate at delays in deliveries, hundreds of survivors are scrambling to board military planes to escape their flattened city. But there are not enough flights to cope.
The sick, injured and elderly are officially allowed to board first but many people complain that military families are often given priority.
“We have not received anything, not even a drop of porridge,” said one woman at the airport, her voice choking with emotion. “My two siblings could die. My older brother and my nephew are sick. I am the only one who is not ill. Are they going to wait for all of us here to get sick and die, one by one, before they do anything?”
International help has arrived, including a US aircraft carrier.
But almost a week after Typhoon Haiyan slammed into the central Philippines, anger and frustration are boiling over with some taking the law into their own hands, amid reports of violence and looting.
Aid workers still expect the typhoon’s confirmed death toll of some 2,350 to rise. The preliminary number of missing remains at 22,000 according to the Red Cross, although it says some of those unaccounted for may since have been located.
