A US aircraft carrier "strike group" has started unloading food and water to the typhoon-ravaged central Philippines, as President Benigno Aquino faced mounting pressure to speed up the distribution of supplies.

While relief efforts picked up, local authorities began burying the dead - an important, if grim, milestone for a city shredded by one of the world's most powerful typhoons and the tsunami-like wall of seawater believed to have killed thousands.

"There are still bodies on the road," said Alfred Romualdez, mayor of Tacloban, a city of 220,000 people reduced to rubble in worst-hit Leyte province. "It's scary. There is a request from a community to come and collect bodies. They say it's five or 10. When we get there, it's 40."

Many petrol station owners whose businesses were spared have refused to reopen, leaving little fuel for trucks needed to move supplies and medical teams around the devastated areas nearly a week after Typhoon Haiyan struck.

"The choice is to use the same truck either to distribute food or collect bodies," Mr Romualdez added.

The nuclear-powered USS George Washington aircraft carrier and accompanying ships arrived off wind-swept eastern Samar province, carrying 5000 crew and more than 80 aircraft, after what strike force commander Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery called a "high-speed transit" from Hong Kong.

It is moored near where US General Douglas MacArthur's force of 174,000 men landed on October 20, 1944, in one of the biggest allied victories of the Second World War.

Operation Damayan started with the George Washington and two cruisers taking up position off Samar to assess damage and provide logistical and emergency support such as fresh water.

Ships carried 11 pallets ashore -eight containing 1920 gallons of water and three containing food - at Tacloban airfield. Several pallets of water were taken to Guiuan, home to 45,000 people, which was also badly hit by the storm.

The carrier moved some fixed-wing aircraft ashore to make more room for the helicopters on the flight deck.

Britain also said it would send a helicopter carrier, HMS Illustrious, to help in the relief effort. Japan was also planning to send up to 1000 troops as well as naval vessels and aircraft in what could be Tokyo's biggest post-war military deployment.

Outside Taclaban, burials began for 300 bodies in a mass grave. A larger grave will be dug for 1000, city administrator Tecson John Lim said.

The city government remains paralysed, with an average of 70 workers compared to 2500 normally, he added. Many were killed, injured, lost family or were simply too overcome with grief to work.

The government was distributing 50,000 food packs containing 13lb of rice and canned goods each day, but that covers just 3% of the 1.73 million families affected by the typhoon.

Aquino has been on the defensive over his handling of the storm given warnings of its projected strength and the risk of a storm surge, and now the pace of relief efforts.

He has said the death toll might have been higher had it not been for the evacuation of people and the readying of relief supplies, but survivors from worst-affected areas say they had little warning of a tsunami-like wall of water.

Aquino has also stoked debate over the extent of the casualties, citing a much lower death toll than the 10,000 estimated by local authorities. Official confirmed deaths stood at 2357 yesterday, a figure aid workers expect to rise.

The preliminary number of missing as of yesterday, according to the Red Cross, remained at 22,000. It has cautioned that number could include people who have since been located.

Tacloban's main convention centre, the Astrodome, has become temporary home for hundreds of people living in abject squalor.

Families cooked meals amid the stench of garbage and urine. Debris was strewn along rows of seats rising from dark pools of stagnant water.

"We went into the Astrodome and asked who is in charge and just got blank stares," said Joe Lowry, a spokesman for the International Organisation for Migration, which is setting up camps for the displaced.

Survivors formed long queues under searing sunshine, and then torrential rain, to charge mobile phones from the only power source available: a city hall generator. Others started to repair motorbikes and homes..

More the 544,600 people have been displaced and nearly 12 percent of the population affected, the UN said. But many areas still have not received aid.

"It's true, there are still areas we have not been able to get to where people are in desperate need," UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said. "I very much hope that in the next 48 hours, that will change.