The Philippines has been hit by its fourth typhoon in under a month, leading to thousands of evacuations.
Typhoon Toraji struck near Dilasag town, about 220 kilometres north-east of the country's capital, Manila, the national weather agency said.
"We're getting hit with strong winds and heavy rain. Some trees are being toppled and power has been cut since yesterday," Merwina Pableo, the civil defence chief of Dinalungan town near Dilasag, said.
Rescuers said around 7,000 people were moved from coastal areas as well as flood-prone and landslide-prone areas in Aurora and Isabela, the first two provinces to be struck before Toraji ploughed inland to the mountainous interior of the main island of Luzon.
The government ordered 2,500 villages to be evacuated on Sunday. As of Monday, the national disaster office had not reported the total number of evacuees.
In the landfall area of Dilasag, 31-year-old school teacher Glenn Balanag filmed the onslaught of the 130 kilometre per hour winds, which violently shook coconut trees around his rural home.
"Big trees are falling and we heard the roofs of some houses were damaged. The rain is continuing and a river nearby is rising," Mr Balanag said.
The national weather agency warned of severe winds and "intense to torrential" rainfall exceeding 200 millimetres across the north of the country, along with a moderate to high risk of a storm surge including waves up to three metres high on the north coast.
Schools and government offices were shut in areas expected to be hit hardest by the latest typhoon.
Aurora and Isabela officials said the main impact appeared to be downed trees and power pylons that blocked major roads.
The typhoon was forecast to blow out to the South China Sea late Monday, the weather service said.
Aurora provincial disaster response chief Elson Egargue told AFP he pushed out crews to clear roads after Toraji left the province in early afternoon.
After Toraji, a tropical depression could also potentially strike the region as early as Thursday night, weather forecaster Veronica Torres told AFP.
Tropical Storm Man-yi, currently east of Guam, may also threaten the Philippines next week, she added.
Toraji follows three cyclones in the Philippines in under a month that have killed 159 people.
Last week, Typhoon Yinxing slammed into the country's north coast, damaging houses and buildings.
A 12-year-old girl was crushed to death in one incident.
Last month, Severe Tropical Storm Trami and Super Typhoon Kong-rey together left 158 people dead, the national disaster agency said, with most deaths attributed to Trami.
About 20 big storms and typhoons hit the archipelago nation or its surrounding waters each year.
A recent study in the Nature journal showed that storms in the Asia-Pacific region are increasingly forming closer to coastlines, intensifying more rapidly and lasting longer over land due to climate change.
AFP/ABC
