A strong typhoon threatens the northern Philippine region that is still recovering from successive storms

MANILA, Philippines — A strong typhoon was forecast to hit the northern Philippines on Thursday, prompting a new round of evacuations in a region still recovering from back-to-back storms a few weeks ago.

Typhoon Yinxing is the thirteenth to hit the disaster-prone Southeast Asian country this season.

“I really feel sorry for our people, but they are all tough,” Batanes Province Governor Marilou Cayco said by phone. Her province has been hit by recent devastating storms and is expected to be hit by Yinxing’s heavy winds and rain.

Tens of thousands of villagers returned to emergency shelters and disaster response teams were put back on alert in Cagayan and other northern provinces near Yinxing’s expected path. The typhoon was located about 175 kilometers east of Aparri city in Cagayan province on Thursday morning.

The slow-moving typhoon, locally named Marce, had sustained winds of up to 165 kilometers per hour and gusts of up to 205 kilometers per hour and was forecast to hit or come very close to the Cagayan coast. and outlying islands later Thursday.

The coast guard, army, air force and police were alerted. Inter-island ferries, freight services and domestic flights were suspended in the northern provinces.

Tropical Storm Trami and Typhoon Kong-rey struck the northern Philippines in recent weeks, killing at least 151 people and affecting nearly 9 million others. More than 14 billion pesos ($241 million) worth of rice, corn and other crops and infrastructure were damaged.

The deaths and destruction caused by the storms prompted President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to declare a day of national mourning on Monday when he visited the worst-hit province of Batangas, south of the capital Manila. At least 61 people died in the coastal province.

Trami dumped one to two months of rain in just 24 hours in some regions, including Batangas.

“We want to avoid loss of life due to calamities,” Marcos said in Batangas town of Talisay, where he brought key cabinet members to reassure storm victims of swift government assistance. “Storms today are more intense, larger and more powerful.”

In 2013, Typhoon Haiyanone of the strongest tropical cyclones on record, it left more than 7,300 people dead or missing, leveled entire villages and caused ships to run aground and crash into homes in the central Philippines.