MANILA: Typhoon Usagi blew out of the Philippines early Friday as another dangerous storm drew closer, threatening an area where scores were killed by flash floods and landslides just weeks ago, the weather service said.
As Usagi — the archipelago nation’s fifth storm in three weeks — headed north to Taiwan, rescuers worked to reach residents stranded on rooftops in northern Luzon island, where herds of livestock were devastated.
The recent wave of disasters has killed at least 159 people and prompted the United Nations to request $32.9 million in aid for the worst-affected regions.
On Thursday, flash floods driven by Usagi struck 10 largely evacuated villages around the town of Gonzaga in Cagayan province, local rescue official Edward Gaspar told AFP by phone.
“We rescued a number of people who had refused to move to the shelters and got trapped on their rooftops,” Gaspar added.
While the evacuation of more than 5,000 Gonzaga residents ahead of the typhoon saved lives, he said two houses were swept away and many others were damaged while the farming region’s livestock industry took a heavy blow.
“We have yet to account for the exact number of hogs, cattle and poultry lost from the floods, but I can say the losses were huge,” Gaspar said.
Trees uprooted by flooding damaged a major bridge in Gonzaga, isolating nearby Santa Ana, a coastal town of about 36,000 people, Cagayan officials said.
“Most evacuees have returned home, but we held back some of them. We have to check first if their houses are still safe for habitation,” Bonifacio Espiritu, operations chief of the civil defense office in Cagayan, told AFP.
By early Friday, Usagi was over the Luzon Strait with a reduced strength of 120 kilometers (75 miles) an hour as it headed toward southern Taiwan, where authorities had downgraded the typhoon to a tropical storm.
But the streak of violent weather was forecast to continue in the central Philippines, where Severe Tropical Storm Man-yi is set to reach coastal waters by Sunday.
The weather service said it could potentially strike at or near the heavily populated capital Manila.
A UN assessment said the past month’s storms damaged or destroyed 207,000 houses, with 700,000 people forced to seek temporary shelter.
Many families were without essentials like sleeping mats, hygiene kits and cooking supplies, and had limited access to safe drinking water.
Thousands of hectares of farmland were destroyed and persistent flooding was likely to delay replanting efforts and worsen food supply problems, the report added.
About 20 big storms and typhoons hit the Southeast Asian nation or its surrounding waters each year, killing scores of people and keeping millions in enduring poverty, but it is unusual for multiple such weather events to take place in a small window.
The weather service said this tends to happen during seasonal episodes of La Nina, a climatic phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean that pushes more warm water toward Asia, causing heavy rains and flooding in the region and drought in the southern United States.

SRINAGAR, India: Ambushes, firefights and a market grenade blast: headline-grabbing attacks in Indian-administered Kashmir are designed to challenge New Delhi’s bid to portray normality in the disputed territory, Indian security officials say.
Kashmir has been divided between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan since their partition at the chaotic end of British rule in 1947, and both countries claim the territory in full.
“The attacks are not merely about killing, but also to set a narrative to counter the Indian narrative — that everything is fine,” said the former head of India’s Northern Command forces, retired general Deependra Singh Hooda.
Half a million Indian troops are deployed in the far northern region, battling a 35-year insurgency in which tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and rebels have been killed, including at least 120 this year.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government canceled the Muslim-majority region’s partial autonomy in 2019, a decision accompanied by mass arrests and a months-long communications blackout.
The territory of around 12 million people has since been ruled by a governor appointed by New Delhi, overseeing the local government that voters elected in October in opposition to Modi.
New Delhi insists it helped bring “peace, development and prosperity” to the region.
But military experts say that small bands of rebels — demanding either independence or Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan — use attacks to contradict the claims.
“The larger message being sent out is that the problem in Kashmir is alive,” Hooda said.
India blames Pakistan for arming militants and helping them “infiltrate” across the militarzed dividing line to launch attacks, an allegation Islamabad denies.
A “spurt in infiltration” this year by insurgents was “not possible without Pakistan’s army actively allowing it,” Hooda charged.
Many clashes take place in forested mountains far from larger settlements.
But the huge military presence visible in sprawling camps and roadblocks, roughly one in every 25 people in Kashmir is an Indian soldier, serves as a constant reminder.
Many are frustrated by traffic jams caused by military orders that civilian cars stay at least 500 meters (1,640 feet) away from army vehicles.
Yet those who have long lived under the shadow of the grinding insurgency seemingly shrug off the threat.
When an attacker this month hurled a grenade at security forces in a busy market — killing a woman and wounding 11 civilians — shoppers returned within a couple of hours.
This month, thousands attended an army recruitment drive, even as soldiers battled gunmen in a nearby district. 
Attacks appear dramatic, including a gunbattle in downtown Srinagar in early November that police said killed a commander of the Pakistan-backed Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group.
Earlier this year, attacks in the Jammu area — a Hindu-majority region — prompted the army to supply thousands of militia forces, dubbed village defense guards, with rifles.
But the death toll of 120 civilians, soldiers and rebels killed this year is, so far, similar in intensity to 2023, when 130 people died, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, a New Delhi-based monitoring group.
“It will remain like this on low boil, as long as Kashmir is divided (between India and Pakistan),” a security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to journalists.
“We control it here; they (Pakistan) will activate it from there.”
The Indian army says around 720 rebels have been killed in the past five years.
Regional army commander MV Suchindra Kumar said in October he believed fewer than 130 remained in the fight.
Another security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said those include “highly trained and well-armed” fighters who had crossed from Pakistan.
“They are causing some damage by surprise attacks,” the official said. “But the situation is under control.”
Hooda, drawing on his long experience as a general, predicts little change as long as violence serves the agenda of India’s rival Islamabad.
“I don’t see this coming down immediately,” he said, referring to the number of attacks.
“Pakistan has always felt that ratcheting up attacks will bring the spotlight on Kashmir.”