Iran ready to help Philippines over typhoon Haiyan

Iran’s Red Crescent Society (RCS) expressed sympathy with the victims of the recent typhoon in the Philippines, and voiced readiness to dispatch humanitarian aids to Manila. The RCS underscored its personnel's skillfulness in both national and international disaster cases, and voiced Tehran's readiness to sent humanitarian aid, rescue and relief team and mobile hospitals to Philippines. On Tuesday, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani extended his condolences to the Filipino nation on the death of their beloved ones in the recent devastating typhoon. In a message of condolence to his Filipino counterpart Benigno Aquino, President Rouhani hoped that the Filipinos would leave behind the current calamity, and prayed to God to bestow patience upon the bereaved families who lost their loved ones in the disaster. On Friday, super typhoon Haiyan, the world's strongest cyclone this year, hit the Philippines with gusts of 275 kilometers (171 miles) per hour. Haiyan was over the island of Samar, about 600 kilometers Southeast of Manila, after making landfall at the coastal town of Guiuan at 4:40 a.m. (2040 GMT Thursday). The typhoon killed about 2,000 people including almost 1,300 in the province of Leyte.