DHAKA: UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon urged Philippine typhoon survivors to ‘never despair’ as he pledged on Saturday to rally global backing to help them recover from one of their country’s deadliest disasters.

‘Never despair. The UN is behind you. The world is behind you,’ the UN chief said during a visit to the devastated central city of Tacloban, which suffered more than 5,000 deaths from super typhoon Haiyan, which swept through the central islands of the Philippines on November 8.

Wearing a baseball cap, the 69-year-old South Korean UN chief walked through a narrow, debris-strewn street in Fatima, a coastal district in the city of 220,000 people where tsunami-like storm surges wrought by the typhoon obliterated entire neighbourhoods.

A ship that ploughed through the neighbourhood after being hurled by huge waves lay stranded nearby, six weeks after the deluge.

BDST: 1625 HRS, DEC 21, 2013
Edited by Robab Rosan, Current Affairs Editor