Typhoon Toraji hit near Dilasag town, about 220 kilometres (140 miles) northeast of the capital, Manila, the national weather agency said.

Rescuers said around 7,000 people were moved from coastal areas as well as flood-prone and landslide-prone areas in Aurora and Isabela, the first two provinces to be struck before Toraji ploughed inland to the mountainous interior of the main island of Luzon.

The national weather agency warned of severe winds and “intense to torrential” rainfall exceeding 200 millimetres (eight inches) across the north of the country, along with a “moderate to high risk of a storm surge” – giant waves up to three metres (10 feet) high on the north coast.

After Toraji, a tropical depression could also potentially strike the region as early as Thursday night, weather forecaster Veronica Torres told AFP. Tropical Storm Man-yi, currently east of Guam, may also threaten the Philippines next week, she added. Toraji came on the heels of three cyclones in less than a month that killed 159 people.

About 20 big storms and typhoons hit the archipelago nation or its surrounding waters each year. A recent study showed that storms in the Asia-Pacific region are increasingly forming closer to coastlines, intensifying more rapidly and lasting longer over land due to climate change.