Aid experts fly to battered Philippines
Switzerland has sent five experts from the Swiss Humanitarian Aid Unit to the Philippines after a devastating typhoon reportedly killed at least 10,000 people.
The Swiss foreign ministry said the group left on Saturday evening and would work closely with international aid organisations, delivering emergency assistance.
The foreign ministry said three Swiss experts, including doctors, were already in the Philippines. They are liaising closely with the Swiss embassy in Manila and assessing the needs of the people on the ground.
Typhoon Haiyan, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded, with winds of 235km/h per hour that gusted to 275km/h, slammed into six central Philippine islands on Friday before exiting into the South China Sea.
Most of the deaths appear to have been caused by surging sea water strewn with debris that many said resembled a tsunami, levelling houses and drowning its victims.
It wasn’t until Sunday that the scale of the devastation became clear, with local officials on hardest-hit Leyte Island saying that there may be 10,000 dead in the provincial capital of Tacloban alone. Reports also trickled in from elsewhere on the island and from neighbouring islands indicating hundreds, if not thousands, of more deaths, though it will be days before the full extent of the storm’s impact can be assessed.
A massive relief operation was underway, but the Philippine National Red Cross said its efforts were being hampered by looters, including some who attacked trucks of food and other relief supplies the agency was shipping on Sunday from the southern port city of Davao to Tacloban.
The Swiss embassy in Manila currently has no information on the 3,000 or so Swiss who live in the Philippines. It is busy trying to contact those who live in the affected areas, although this is proving difficult as communications have been badly damaged.
The Swiss foreign ministry has set up a helpline (see link) for those with friends or relatives in the disaster zone.
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