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Officials in the Philippines say at least three people have been killed by a powerful typhoon that hit the northern province of Cagayan with wind and heavy rain.
Typhoon Parma, known locally as Pepeng, with gusts of about 200 kilometers per hour, made landfall Saturday, tearing roofs off buildings, toppling trees and cutting power lines.
Flooding in Manila was averted when the storm veered to the north, sparing millions of people. A deadly storm just a week ago caused the worst flooding in the capital city in decades.
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Typhoon Parma is expected to head back out to sea in the direction of Taiwan, where evacuations in some areas are underway.
As Parma approached the Philippines on Friday, President Gloria Arroyo declared a "state of calamity" throughout the island nation and ordered mass evacuations in six provinces.
Her declaration of emergency freed up funds to help the government respond to emergencies.
The commander of U.S. troops in the Pacific region, Admiral Timothy Keating, said two U.S. Navy ships with several hundred Marines on board are off the coast of Manila, ready to help.
Parma was expected to make conditions worse for nearly 700,000 people who had already been forced into emergency shelters by Typhoon Ketsana.
After plowing through the Philippines, Ketsana ripped across Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. It killed more than 290 people in the Philippines, nearly 100 in Vietnam and at least 14 in Cambodia. The Red Cross in Laos said 16 people have been killed and at least 100 others are missing.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.
