A NUMBER of UK nationals remains missing in the Philippines more than a week after Typhoon Haiyan ravaged the country, it has emerged.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague confirmed yesterday that an unspecified number of Britons known to have been in the huge storm's path remain unaccounted for, including Colin Bembridge, 61, from Grimsby, who was staying with his Filipino partner Maybelle, 35, and their three-year-old daughter Victoria near the city of Tacloban when the storm struck.

The information was released after Hague telephoned his Philippines counterpart, Albert Ferreros del Rosario, to offer condolences for the loss of life in the wake of the typhoon. The Foreign Office has not revealed how many are feared lost.

Disaster relief is slowly beginning to trickle into the regions worst affected by the catastrophe, but remains patchy as the damage wrought to the country's infrastructure continues to hamper efforts.

Officials have reported a surge in desperate, hungry survivors trying to leave the coastal city of Ormoc, 105km (65 miles) west of Tacloban yesterday, while at least 3633 people are now thought to have died.

Hundreds of international aid workers have set up makeshift hospitals and trucked in supplies to the ravaged central islands, while helicopters from a US aircraft carrier have begun ferrying medicine and water to remote areas.

The UK government said it will give an extra £30 million in emergency aid, bringing the total pledged to £50m. An RAF C-130 Hercules aircraft is also being sent to help aid workers. The Disasters Emergency Committee said donations from the public had reached £33m.

On the ground, relief agencies have said they are seeing scenes of almost total devastation with the risk of disease from unburied bodies now adding to the hazards facing those affected by the storm.

Last night, residents of Tanauan, a fishing town about 15km (9 miles) southeast of Tacloban, said they only started receiving substantial aid on Friday after being forced to survive on biscuits and dispose of dead bodies on their own for days.

More than 60 people were buried behind the municipal office in the district of 50,000 people. Down the road, dozens of corpses were interred under a roundabout.

Eoghan Rice, a spokesman for the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund (Sciaf), has been in the area to assess the damage and prepare the way for aid to be distributed.

He said: "The level of destruction in Tacloban and the surrounding area is unbelievable. We drove for hours to get to the city and at first there were a just few trees blown down, but when we got within 100km the real devastation began.

"It starts with a few damaged buildings and powerlines that have come down and gets steadily worse until you reach the city and 80% to 90% of the houses have been levelled. There are bodies at the side of the road and people are still being found in the rubble."

Aid packages from Sciaf are expected to arrive in the Philippines today, including 30,000 prefab shelters ready to be handed out. Yet this is only the tip of the iceberg, with the United Nations estimating that two million people have been displaced by the storm.

Rice added: "People have been left with nothing. No food, water or shelter - and they have lost their livelihoods so they do not have the money to pay for these things. The harvest has been destroyed as well and people will be completely dependant on aid for months."

Fernando Soares, deputy executive director of Edinburgh-based disaster relief charity Mercy Corps, said it will take years to repair the damage and that the scale is comparable to disasters such as the Haitian earthquake of 2010 or the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004.

The charity, which specialises in long-term reconstruction and helping rebuild affected areas economies, has 10 people working in the disaster zone already.

Soares said: "There will be communities that have not been assessed or have not being spoken to. We need to make sure they are contacted and then make sure that's followed up with very quick relief aid. That's been a criticism so far, but aid will always be slow when you have destruction of this magnitude … No government is prepared to respond to something of this scale."

In front of Tacloban's San Fernando Elementary School yesterday, government workers distributed sacks of aid to a restless crowd of hundreds who had spent the last week camped in shattered wooden classrooms with floors covered in wet black sand. Nearby, about a dozen body bags were neatly lined up by the roadside.

Rica Mobilla, 18, a mother of one, said local authorities showed up two days after the disaster, handing out 4kg of rice and a few packs of noodles for her extended family of 13. They stretched this out with onions and garlic from the market.

She said: "I'm upset. I'm not blaming anyone. If there's aid there to give out, we'll receive it."

The Philippines government has defended its efforts. Interior secretary Mar Roxas said: "In a situation like this, nothing is fast enough."

The death toll in the city is written on a whiteboard at the local City Hall and bodies have been buried in mass graves since Thursday. Tacloban's mayor, Alfred Romualdez, said many people may have been swept out to sea after the tsunami-like wall of seawater slammed into coastal areas.

Meanwhile, a 12-strong team of British doctors, surgeons and paramedics landed in the capital, Manila, on Friday to help treat survivors of the typhoon, the Department for International Development said.

Their arrival came as Prime Minister David Cameron announced that Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious was being sent to support the humanitarian operation.

The vessel, which was taking part in exercises in the Gulf, will replace HMS Daring, which has already been deployed to the Philippines.