Terrified workers at one of the Philippines' major airports on Saturday described how they were forced to climb out of windows to escape being killed as the strongest typhoon in history swept across their nation and claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people.

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"It was like a tsunami," said Efren Nagrama, Tacloban airport's manager, who had remained behind with his colleagues to try to keep the airport open when 13ft of water surged across the runway and hit their control building.

"We escaped through the windows and I held on to a pole for nearly an hour as rain, seawater and wind swept through the airport. Some of my staff survived by clinging to trees," he said.

An estimated 1,200 people are thought to have been killed as Super Typhoon Haiyan swept across the islands on Friday, leaving a trail of destruction in the wake of its 160mph winds and storm surges that sent 16ft-high waves rolling down streets. Tens of thousands of people are missing.

"My daughter was ripped from my arms by the force of the water. Now, she's gone," said one man in Tacloban, the central city worse hit by the raging winds.

The Red Cross fear 1,000 people have died there. Haiyan turned the simple wooden shacks that are the homes for most people in Tacloban and the surrounding Leyte province into piles of broken timber.

"This is every bit as bad as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. It was an absolutely massive storm," said David Carden, the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Manila, the capital.

"It was a category five typhoon and it didn't weaken when it made landfall, so we are fearing the worst." A month's worth of rain fell on Tacloban in just a few hours and flash floods reduced brick buildings to rubble, while the ferocious wind flipped cars into the air. In the nearby town of Palo, Love Anover took refuge in a church.

"I thought that because it was the house of the Lord we would be safe," she said. Miss Anover survived, but the roof of the church was ripped off. Even those who were safe will never forget the sound of Haiyan.

"It was like a 747 jet flying above my house," said Jim Pe, the deputy mayor of the fishing village of Coron on the island of Busuanga in Palawan, the last province that Haiyan hit before heading off towards Vietnam.

Bodies are being stored in the ruins of churches in Tacloban, and yesterday grieving relatives arrived in a constant stream to identify them and pay their last respects.

One woman knelt on the flooded floor, weeping as she clutched the hand of a baby boy laid out on a pew. In some towns, corpses floated down flooded streets, or washed ashore on beaches, bringing a risk of disease that could see the death toll climb sharply.

Up to one million people were thought to have been in the path of Haiyan. Some 200 are reported dead in Samar Province by the Philippines Red Cross.

Other deaths are believed to have occurred on the popular tourist islands of Cebu and Panay. The desperate search is on for survivors and to bring aid to places like Tacloban that have no power, communications, food or water, with medical supplies running low.

"Search-and-rescue teams are working around the clock. The casualties are very high and rising by the hour," said Aaron Aspi of the aid agency World Vision, which has mobilised more than 500 workers for their biggest ever relief effort. There were reports of hungry and homeless residents looting shops in Tacloban.

"We've been told it's OK to take food," said one man who had just raided the supermarket at a Tacloban shopping centre. "It's really difficult now. We have had death in the family from the storm so we must care for the living and do anything to survive. Money has no value now."

Airports in the affected regions have been left in ruins, and roads are impassable because of fallen trees and collapsed bridges. Military helicopters are the only source of outside help for now. Despite knowing that Haiyan was on its way days before, aid organisations admit to being overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster.

"Definitely things are worse than we expected," Richard Gordon, the chairman of the Philippines Red Cross, said. "We didn't expect so much damage and so many people left dead or homeless. It's an awful, awful situation."

Many people in the areas struck by Haiyan are still unaccounted for Carden, from the UN, said: "There are many pockets where we have no information and that's very worrying.

"This is a country where almost everyone has a mobile phone and we're not hearing from people in some areas." Aerial surveys of the coastline further north in Leyte revealed that Haiyan was so powerful that it tossed heavy ships ashore, while fields are completely underwater.

The fear is that the people living in those areas will have taken the brunt of the storm and, if not dead, are now isolated and helpless. Concern is mounting, too, over those living in eastern Samar province and especially the town of Guiuan, where Haiyan first made landfall in the Philippines.

Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated from low-lying, coastal regions in the days before Haiyan hit, following a televised appeal by Benigno Aquino, the President. But many in Leyte and Samar provinces, the worst-affected regions, were unable to leave.

"Samar and Leyte are amongst the poorest provinces in the Philippines. "Over a third of the population live under the poverty line," said Maria Madamba-Nunez, Oxfam's spokesman in Manila.

"People aren't very mobile because they are poor and are tied to their land and fishing areas." Millions in Vietnam now face the same possible fate as those struggling to survive in the Philippines.

Haiyan is on course to strike the centre and north of the country sometime today. Currently, a category four typhoon, it may yet pick up strength again as it crosses the South China Sea.