The death toll from Typhoon Kalmaegi in the Philippines has risen to 66, with 26 missing and over 430,000 displaced, the national disaster agency said on Wednesday.
Ten people were also reported injured in floods and other accidents caused by tTyphoon Kalmaegi, as the weather system dumped heavy rains over 24 provinces in the main Philippine regions of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.
The typhoon was packing maximum sustained winds of 130 kilometres per hour and gusts of wind of up to 180 km/h as it moved away from the Philippines' western coast, the bureau's latest advisory said.
It was moving north-westward at 25 km/h and was expected to exit the Philippines late on Wednesday or Thursday as it headed towards Vietnam, the bureau added.
Forty-nine of the fatalities were from the province of Cebu, which was badly hit by significant flooding, the disaster agency said. The deaths were caused by drowning, landslides and fallen debris, the Office of Civil Defense (OCD) added.
Eleven deaths, caused by flooding and fallen debris, were also reported in the Negros Island region and the provinces of Capiz, Bohol, Leyte and Southern Leyte.
In the southern province of Agusan del Sur, six people were killed when a military helicopter part of the military assets deployed to assess damage from the typhoon crashed, the OCD added.
A total of 706,549 people in 24 provinces were affected by the typhoon, including 436,911 forced to flee their homes, the disaster agency said.
Restoration of power supply was ongoing, but most of the affected areas were still either partially or totally without electricity, especially the badly-hit areas of Cebu, Southern Leyte and Negros Occidental provinces.
More than 30 flights were cancelled on Wednesday, while nearly 3,000 passengers were still stranded in seaports, the coast guard said.
The weather bureau said another tropical cyclone was moving towards the Philippines and was expected to enter the country by Friday evening or Saturday. The tropical depression is expected to intensify and may become a super typhoon over the weekend.
The Philippines is hit by an average of about 20 tropical cyclones per year. One of the strongest storms to ever hit the country was Super Typhoon Haiyan in November 2013, which killed more than 6,300 people.
