The World Bank will lend $100 million to the Philippines to bolster a government scheme that helps millions of poor families give their children proper schooling and healthcare, it said Wednesday.

The extra funding will mean 200,000 more households are given a monthly subsidy of not more than $34 in return for ensuring children under 14 go to school and get regular health checks.

The Philippines is to roll out 100,000 electric tricycles in an effort to replace the petrol-powered ones that currently ply its cities, one of the project's financiers said Tuesday.

The "e-trikes" would provide an alternative to the gas-guzzling, smoke-belching motorized tricycles that now ferry Manila residents through narrow streets not served by buses, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said.

The United Nations launched a $65 million global aid appeal Monday to help desperate survivors of a typhoon that killed more than 600 people and affected millions in the southern Philippines.

Luiza Carvalho, country officer for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said the funds would initially help provide food, water and emergency shelter to 480,000 people in the worst-hit areas.

Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday issued a call for "brotherly solidarity" with the Philippines after a typhoon killed at least 500 people and left tens of thousands homeless in the south of what is Asia's bastion of Catholicism.

The pontiff said during his weekly Angelus address that he felt "close to the people of the Philippines affected" by Typhoon Bopha, which forecasters said would turn back towards the country and hit again early Sunday.

A typhoon that has killed hundreds of people and left tens of thousands homeless in the southern Philippines turned back towards the country Saturday, the state weather service said.

Typhoon Bopha would slam into the northern tip of the main island of Luzon overnight from Saturday into Sunday, packing gusts of up to 160 kilometers (around 100 miles) an hour, the service said.

Rescuers were digging through mud and debris Friday to retrieve more bodies strewn across a farming valley in the southern Philippines by a powerful typhoon. The death toll from the storm has surpassed 500, with more than 400 people missing.

More than 310,000 people have lost their homes since Typhoon Bopha struck Tuesday and are crowded inside evacuation centers or staying with their relatives, relying on food and emergency supplies being rushed in by government agencies and aid groups.

Nearly 200,000 people were homeless and 475 confirmed dead after the Philippines' worst typhoon this year, officials said Thursday, as the government appealed for international help.

Typhoon Bopha ploughed across Mindanao island on Tuesday, flattening whole towns in its path as hurricane-force winds brought torrential rain that triggered a deadly combination of floods and landslides.

At least 274 people have been killed and hundreds remain missing in the Philippines from the deadliest typhoon to hit the country this year, the civil defense chief said Wednesday.

A total of 253 people died in and around the gold-rush mountain towns of New Bataan and Monkayo after Typhoon Bopha Tuesday let loose landslides and flash floods there, Defense Undersecretary and civil defense chief Benito Ramos said.

Typhoon Bopha killed at least 52 people in the Philippines on Tuesday, officials and television reports said as the strongest storm to hit the country this year wreaked devastation.

ABS-CBN television said 43 of the deaths occurred in one southern town that was in the direct path of Bopha's 210 kilometer (130 mile) an hour winds soon after it hit land on Mindanao island's east coast at dawn.

A powerful typhoon barreled towards the Philippines Monday, prompting authorities to order the immediate evacuation of thousands of people from coastal and low-lying areas, officials said.

Typhoon Bopha, packing winds of up to 210 kilometers (130 miles) an hour, is expected to hit a southern fishing village overnight, making it the strongest typhoon to slam the Philippines this year.