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MANILA - Large parts of the northern Philippines were flooded and without power Sunday after Typhoon Parma killed at least 15 people, as authorities warned of another storm looming to the east.
Exactly one week after storm Ketsana dumped the heaviest rains in more than 40 years that devastated Manila, killing nearly 300 people, Parma ripped through the north of the Philippines' main Luzon island on Saturday.
Many areas in the north remained blacked out and cut off from communication on Sunday as Parma left the country and hovered over the South China Sea. Roads were submerged or littered with fallen trees and toppled power lines.
Two separate landslides buried homes in the province of Benguet, killing 12 people on Saturday, provincial police director Chief Superintendent Loreto Espinili said.
The fatalities were on top of three casualties earlier reported by other authorities elsewhere.
The state weather bureau warned of more misery as Typhoon Melor, monitored about 600 kilometres to the east, was expected to enter Philippine maritime territory by Monday afternoon before blowing north to eastern China or Japan.
Melor was "interacting" with Parma, a phenomenon that could see it being sucked back to Luzon, said forecaster Nathaniel Cruz.
"(Parma) will have a looping action, which means that from almost outside the Philippine area of responsibility it will make a recurvature and possibly pass the northern area of Luzon for the second time," he said.
Parma first slammed into the northern province of Cagayan on Saturday and caused major damage there, local authorities reported.
"The winds were very strong. There is no power here. There is extensive damage to houses, electrical posts were toppled," Delfin Ting, mayor of Tuguegarao, the capital city of Cagayan, told local radio.
Illustrating Parma's fury, Cruz said the weather station in Laoag was almost hit by a "flying guardhouse".
There had been no immediate reports of casualties in Cagayan after authorities evacuated nearly 170,000 people in Parma's path before it struck.
Bellaflor Angara, governor of Aurora province also in the north, said swathes of rice fields were under water, which could cause supply problems in the next few months.
"The rains heavily damaged our rice fields," she said over local radio. "We are trying to bring back everything to normal, but that will take time."
Parma was likely to remain almost stationary west of northern Laoag city, and could bring more heavy rain and lashing winds to the area in the next two to three days, forecaster Cruz said.
"It's likely that this will continue for the next several days, then flooding and landslides would be inevitable," Cruz said, adding that Melor would be the 18th tropical cyclone to hit the country this year.
The agriculture department estimated the damage to crops was at least 5.5 billion pesos (117 million US dollars) so far, and said the figure was expected to rise.
While supply of rice is adequate for the year, President Gloria Arroyo ordered agriculture officials to import rice to augment stocks for 2010.
Meanwhile, many areas in Manila and nearby eastern provinces remained flooded more than a week after Ketsana dumped a month's worth of rain in nine hours.
Of the more than 3.3 million affected by the floods, nearly 400,000 remained in evacuation centres scattered across the city.
International aid has been trickling in, although authorities said many areas remain under-served amid warnings of disease outbreaks in overcrowded camps.
- AFP/ir
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