MANILA – The death toll from one of the strongest typhoons ever to make landfall could top 1,200, the Red Cross said Saturday after winds slammed the Philippines.
Early reports suggest 1,000 people have died in the coastal city of Tacloban and at least 200 more in the Samar province, according to Gwendolyn Pang, secretary general of the Philippine Red Cross.
So far, the government has only confirmed seven deaths and said four other people were missing.
The death toll is expected to rise sharply as rescue workers reach areas cut off by the fast-moving storm, whose circumference eclipsed the whole country and which late on Saturday was heading for Vietnam. 
The weather system nearly 200-mph winds as it rampaged through the Philippines on Friday. It was downgraded overnight from a "super typhoon," equivalent to a category 4 or 5 hurricane, to a typhoon.
Along the way, it cut off many of the country's lines of communication, making it hard to establish the extent of its damage.
Pang stressed that the death toll estimates reports were being checked, and that a more exact number would emerge after more precise counting of bodies in each area.
Hundreds of homes were flattened and almost 800,000 people were evacuated to emergency shelters as Haiyan triggered mudslides, flash flooding and a storm surge with waves of up to 30 feet Friday.
Because the Philippines is made up of more than 7,000 islands — more than 2,000 of them inhabited, with their own local authorities and infrastructures — it typically takes two to three days for full reports to reach rescue agencies.
The Weather Channel's Jim Edds, in Tacloban, said there was a desperate need for drinking water for survivors. "We need it now, we needed it 12 hours ago,"he said.
Edds added that there was a massive wall of water when the storm hit, and described the current situation as chaotic. "Relief is needed here. Now."
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