IDF aid mission leaves for Philippines

An IDF delegation departed on a humanitarian mission to the Philippines Wednesday morning to provide aid to the storm-ravaged city of Tacloban, the army said.

The 148-member group, comprising national search-and-rescue unit officials and senior doctors in the IDF medical corps, will be tasked with rapidly setting up a “multi-department medical facility” to provide medical care for casualties of the disaster in Tacloban.

The facility will have children’s, women’s and ambulatory care departments, as well as a general admission department, and will be “equipped with approximately 100 tons of humanitarian and medical supplies from Israel.”

An IDF assessment team of six medical and logistics experts landed in the Philippines Tuesday to find an optimal location for the field hospital.

The death toll in the typhoon, which made landfall in the central Philippines on Friday, could be at least 10,000, according to reports, though the official death toll currently stands at more than 1,700. At least half a million people also have been left homeless by the devastating typhoon.

An emergency response team sent to the Philippines by the Israeli disaster relief organization IsraAid to the areas hardest hit by Typhoon Haivan arrived Monday to work primarily in Tacloban City in Leyte, one of the areas hardest-hit by the typhoon.