Post date: Nov 15, 2013 10:58:37 PM
Allegations of looting lead to deadly shooting in typhoon-hit Tacloban City, while some survivors are forced to leave elderly loved ones behind as they seek shelter and food.
TACLOBAN, LEYTE PROVINCE, PHILIPPINES (NOVEMBER 13, 2013) (GMA NEWS) - Typhoon survivors desperate for food after days without aid raided a commercial barge carrying rice at a port in Tacloban on Wednesday (November 13), as devastated towns teetered on lawlessness.
Aid was slow to reach survivors, with government and aid agencies facing massive logistical problems.As hunger set in, many turned to looting warehouses and abandoned shops.
An owner of an auto supply warehouse in Tacloban City shot two men dead, saying they were breaking in and attempting to rob him.
The daughter of one of the shooting victims was in tears, denying that her father was guilty of looting, and pleading for justice to a police officer.
The victim's wife Mylene Parientes said her husband was merely taking out his tricycle, and had no intent to steal. Police were investigating the case.
The shooting sparked anger among villagers who said there was enough loss of life in the typhoon, there was no need to shoot at suspects.
As villagers in typhoon-struck towns in Leyte province struggled to survive, some made painful choices and separated from their loved ones who chose not to evacuate.
The Irac family in Tanauan town left behind their elderly loved ones, who preferred to stay put instead of joining the exodus of thousands out of the province.
The family was in tears, as the grandparents held their grandchildren tightly, fearing it could be their last embrace.
"She didn't want to join us, she said she could die anytime soon anyway. But what choice do we have? There's no food, there's no water here. The children are suffering from stomach illness," saidLilian Irac of her 78-year-old mother-in-law.
Also in Tanauan, a father had just found his son's remains, and buried it on a roadside. His mother, father, sibling and other relatives perished in the typhoon.
The death toll from one of the world's most powerful typhoons surged to about 4,000 on Friday (November 15), but the aid effort was still so patchy bodies lay uncollected as rescuers tried to evacuate stricken communities across the central Philippines.
The preliminary number of missing according to the Red Cross on Friday, rose to 25,000 from 22,000 a day earlier. That could include people who have since been located, it said.
Tacloban Mayor Alfred Romualdez said some people may have been swept out to sea and their bodies lost after a tsunami-like wall of seawater slammed into coastal areas.