Philippine troops killed two communist insurgents who attacked an aid convoy en route to typhoon-devastated Tacloban on Tuesday, the military said, as soldiers were deployed to quell looting by hungry survivors.
Bodies still littered the streets of the city, where the United Nations fears 10,000 people could have died when the category-five Haiyan struck on Friday.
Thousands of people whose homes were destroyed by one of the most powerful typhoons on record were facing yet another night of misery, many without shelter, as troops established checkpoints to try to restore order and allow much-needed aid to percolate through.
Some of that aid fell victim to one of the Philippines’ long-running insurgencies when 15 communist rebels ambushed trucks on their way to the storm-wracked region, a local commander said.
“There were no casualties on the government side,” Lieutenant Colonel Joselito Kakilala said, adding that two members of the New People’s Army, the militant wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, were killed and another wounded in the clash in Matnog town, some 240 kilometres from Tacloban.