AT least 25 people have been killed and nearly 300,000 evacuated as storms batter the Philippines.
A new tropical storm struck on Thursday night, unleashing winds up to 74 miles per hour and triggering devastating floods and landslides.
Typhoon Co-may struck the mountainous northern town of Agno, in Pangasinan province, as it swept through the Philippines on Thursday night.
At least 25 people have died from flash floods, landslides and electrocution since last weekend, officials say, with eight more reported missing.
Seasonal monsoon rains have pounded a vast stretch of the country for over a week.
And more than a dozen tropical storms are forecast to hit the Southeast Asian country before the end of the year.
Schools in the capital, Manila, were closed on Friday for the third day in a row.
Schools were also closed in 35 provinces throughout Luzon, the northern region of the nation, where the majority of the 80 towns and cities have announced a state of calamity.
278,000 people have been forced to seek refuge in emergency shelters or with relatives.
Nearly 3,000 homes have been damaged, according to the government’s disaster response agency.
Thousands of troops, police officers, coast guards, firefighters and volunteers have been rushed in to rescue stranded residents.
The US has pledged to provide military aircraft to help transport food and other aid if weather conditions worsen.
Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. visited emergency shelters in Rizal province on Thursday to help distribute food.
He convened an urgent meeting with disaster-response leaders, cautioning that the government and citizens need to prepare for increasingly frequent and unpredictable natural disasters due to climate change.
The Philippines faces about 20 typhoons and storms every year – most hitting the poorest regions of the country.
By Friday afternoon, the typhoon had moved northeast and weakened slightly.
It comes as flash floods tore through central Texas in early July, killing 135 people in a tragedy that shook Texas to its core.
Among the victims were children as young as eight, attending a summer camp.
At least 27 campers and members of staff from Camp Mystic died.
The floods claimed more lives than Hurricane Harvey – the Category 4 storm that devastated Texas in 2017 and killed 107 people.
