A WOMAN covers her nose as she walks past a pile of corpses of Supertyphoon “Yolanda” victims that are to be buried in a mass grave in Tacloban City. RAFFY LERMA
TACLOBAN CITY—At least 12 of the bodies of fatalities from the wrath of Supertyphoon “Yolanda” that had been buried in a mass grave here belonged to foreigners, according to a city official.
Tecson John Lim, city administrator, said the bodies of what he said were Caucasian-looking persons were among the more than 200 buried in graves in Barangay Suhi.
Lim said city authorities could not determine the identities of the foreigners but had made contact with embassies of the United States and European Union countries.
Officials of the foreign embassies, Lim said, were coordinating with the city government for the identification of the bodies.
Lim said the bodies of the foreigners were placed in body bags before they were buried.
Aside from Suhi, the city government has also identified another burial site in Barangay Basper, where more than 1,000 persons have been buried, Lim said.
As of Thursday, the death toll in the city has reached 2,204 while 818 others are missing. The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, as of Thursday, has placed Yolanda’s death toll at 5,759 in all areas struck by Yolanda.
Lim said the city government planned to build a memorial park that would serve as a permanent burial site for the Yolanda fatalities. The planned memorial park will be located inside Holy Cross Cemetery, a privately owned cemetery in Barangay Diit.
The proposed memorial park has a land area of about 1.8 hectares and the ground preparation is expected to start anytime this month, Lim said.