Typhoon Goni ravages Philippines, heads towards Japan

Manila

A weakened Typhoon Goni was headed towards Japan on Sunday, after battering the northern Philippines leaving at least 10 dead, and causing thousands of people to be evacuated off Taiwan's east coast.

On Sunday morning, Goni, packing gusts of 170 kilometres (106 miles) per hour, was located 360 kilometres (224 miles) from the Philippines' northernmost Batanes islands, moving northeast at 17 kilometres per hour, the Philippines government weather station said.

The Philippines was hit hardest by the storm, which triggered landslides and floods, killing at least ten people and leaving 17 missing in the north of the main island of Luzon.

"Pre-emptive evacuations have been conducted in most of the area but sad to note, some of the areas did not do a pre-emptive (evacuation) and some did real-time evacuation when the event was already starting to happen," said Alexander Pama, the country's civil defence chief.

The 17 people missing were from a small mining community that was buried by landslides, police in the area said. Although the Philippine weather station said most of the danger had now passed, 40 evacuation centres are still operational with over 4,000 people housed inside, said Tess Briones, disaster response chief at the social welfare department.

In the northern province of Ilocos Norte, an island town in the middle of a river had its bridge destroyed, leaving about 730 families stranded, officials said. The storm is the ninth out of an average of 20 that hit the Philippines each year.