November 16, 2013
LONDON (AFP) - The Foreign Office said on Friday it was urgently looking into reports that a British man and his family may have been killed by Typhoon Haiyan while visiting the Philippines.
Colin Bembridge, a 61-year-old pharmacist from the northeast of England, his Filipino partner Maybelle, 35, and their three-year-old daughter Victoria have not been seen since the typhoon struck, Channel Four News reported.
They were visiting Maybelle's relatives and had hired a beach house in the coastal village of Baybay close to Tacloban.
But the house was destroyed, leaving only wreckage, including a games consol belonging to the little girl.
"I just want to know whether they are dead or whether they were blown by the winds," Maybelle's mother Lydia Go, 79, told the broadcaster.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We are aware of reports that a British national was killed by Typhoon Haiyan. We are urgently looking into these reports."
The Philippines raised its official death toll from the super typhoon to 3,621 on Friday, but this is below a United Nations count of at least 4,460.
