(Update) More than 10,000 Filipinos feared dead from "super-typhoon"

MANILA, Nov 9 (Reuters) - The Philippine Red Cross estimated that more than 1,000 people were killed in the coastal city of Tacloban and at least 200 in hard-hit Samar province when one of the strongest typhoons ever to make landfall slammed into the country.

Gwendolyn Pang, secretary general of the Philippine Red Cross, said the numbers came from preliminary reports by Red Cross teams in Tacloban and Samar, among the most devastated areas hit by Typhoon Haiyan on Friday.

"An estimated more than 1,000 bodies were seen floating in Tacloban as reported by our Red Cross teams," she told Reuters. "In Samar, about 200 deaths. Validation is ongoing."

An estimated ten thousand people - that’s one with four zeroes after it - are dead in the central Philippines province of Leytein the wake of Typhoon Haiyan. That's a guess based around the number of bodies in the streets - and, chillingly, trees - of the city of Tacloban, which had the misfortune to bear the brunt of the storm surge, and that number could rise once communications are reestablished with some of the areas currently without electricity or communications.

Hundreds of thousands of people are without shelter after the 200km an hour winds flattened buildings, especially along the coast, and the country is bracing for a humanitarian crisis as there is little food and no fresh water. Aid has been mobilised but ports and airports are out of action and roads into the hardest-hit areas are either blocked or damaged. President Benigno Aquino is thought likely to declare martial law in an attempt to maintain order as desperate people have already started looting stores in search of food.

The storm is just now arriving in Vietnam, though it's weakened since taking out its mood on the Philippines, with hundreds of thousands evacuated for fear of landslides.

Philippines: things go from bad to worse to worster to worstest

Speaking of unpleasant reality, things are getting worse in the storm-ravaged Philippines in the wake of Typhoon Haiyam. Armed looters are now reportedly at large in Leyte island, robbing food trucks for their emergency supplies, and those convoys are still limited in their effectiveness since vast areas of the nation are without power, water, telecommunications or accessible roads. Corpses are rotting in the streets, entire towns have been washed away, and police and armed forces are admitting they're largely powerless to a) help keep order and b) cope with the sheer amount of death they're being confronted with. I don't have words to describe what our ground commanders are seeing in the field,” Brigadier-General Domingo Tutaan, spokesman for the Philippine armed forces, understated to the press.

It also appears that yesterday's estimate of 10,000 dead was, at best, optimistic with thousands of people still unaccounted for. It could be weeks before the entire scope of the disaster is known.