Typhoon kills 16 in Philippines

MANILA, Philippines (AP) - Landslides buried two families in the Philippines as they sheltered in their homes from Asia's latest deadly typhoon, which killed at least 16 people and left more than a dozen flooded villages cut off today.

Police Senior Superintendent Loreto Espineli said a family of five, including a 1-year-old boy, died when their home in Benguet province was buried as Typhoon Parma hit Saturday. Seven people, including another family of five, were buried in a nearby village, he said.

Officials had earlier listed four people as being killed in the typhoon, which cut a destructive path across the northern Philippines but spared the capital, Manila.

Parma hit just eight days after an earlier storm left Manila awash in the worst flooding in four decades, killing almost 300 people.

Parma was churning over the South China Sea today, as troops in southern Taiwan helped to evacuate villages that could be hit next. The Central Weather Bureau said Parma should miss the island, but it could still bring heavy rain to flood- and landslide-prone areas still recovering from a deadly typhoon in August.

Tens of thousands of Filipinos fled to higher ground as Parma bore down on the main island of Luzon bearing winds of 108 mph and driving rain. Towns in half a dozen provinces were battered, and downpours swelled rivers to bursting, officials said.

About 14 villages at the mouth of the Cagayan River were flooded when a seawall collapsed, forcing some residents to clamber onto their roofs, the mayor of nearby Aparri town told The Associated Press.

The navy was rushing rubber boats to the area try to rescue people still stranded, he said.

Power, phone lines and Internet links were down across the north, making it difficult to get reports about the extent of damage, Armand Araneta, a civil defense official responsible for several northern provinces, told the AP.

"We really got the brunt of the wind," he said by phone from Tuguegarao city, capital of Cagayan province. "Many trees fell here. The winds knocked down cables, telephone lines - even our windows got shattered by the strong winds."

Manila escaped the worst of the storm. On Sept. 26, Tropical Storm Ketsana killed at least 288 people and damaged the homes of 3 million. Ketsana went on to kill 99 in Vietnam, 14 in Cambodia and 16 in Laos.

Another typhoon, Melor, was churning today in the Philippine Sea, 1,600 miles to the east.