Philippines President Declares "State of National Calamity" After Typhoon Haiyan

Rescue operations underway

Typhoon-ravaged Philippine islands face a daunting relief effort that has barely begun, as bloated bodies lay uncollected and uncounted in the streets and survivors pleaded for food, water and medicine.

Police guarded stores to prevent people from hauling off food, water and such non-essentials as TVs and treadmills, but there was often no one to carry away the dead - not even those seen along the main road from the airport to Tacloban, the worst-hit city along the country's remote eastern seaboard.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino III said in a statement he had a declared a "state of national calamity" allowing the central government to release emergency funds quicker and impose price controls on staple goods. He said the two worst-hit provinces, Leyte and Samar, had witnessed "massive destruction and loss of life" but that elsewhere casualties were low.