Thousands flee typhoon in Philippines

Philippine authorities began evacuating thousands of people and shut down dozens of ports yesterday as a strong typhoon threatened to wallop the country's east coast on Christmas Day.

Nock-Ten is expected to be packing winds of between 203-250 kilometres per hour (126-155 miles per hour) when it crosses over Catanduanes, a remote island of 250,000 people in the Bicol region, late Sunday, the US Joint Typhoon Warning Center said.

It is then expected to hit the country's main island of Luzon, including the capital Manila, on Monday.

The evacuations came as another civil defence official in the area said that hundreds of thousands of residents were under threat from the approaching typhoon.

The Philippine weather service warned of potentially deadly two-metre (six-and-a-half-foot) waves along the coast, as well as landslides and flash floods from heavy rains.

The poor, mainly agricultural region of 5.5 million people is often the first area to be hit by the 20 or so storms and typhoons that pound the archipelago each year.

The most powerful and deadliest typhoon to hit the country was Haiyan, which left 7,350 people dead or missing and destroyed entire towns in heavily populated areas of the central Philippines in November 2013.