Baku. 22 August. REPORT.AZ/ Typhoon Goni slightly weakened Saturday as it lashed the northern Philippines with strong rain and wind that set off landslides and flooded low-lying villages, leaving at least seven people dead and two others missing, officials said, Report informs citing the Associated Press.
The government's weather agency said the typhoon was at sea about 78 miles east of northern Calayan Island on the northern tip of the archipelago and is not expected to make landfall. It is packing maximum sustained winds of 100 miles per hour and gusts of up to 121 mph. The slow-moving typhoon is forecast to start blowing away from the country on Sunday, passing east of Taiwan and heading toward Okinawa, Japan, early next week.
Goni, a Korean word for swan, is the ninth of about 20 storms and typhoons that are expected to batter the Philippines, one of the world's most disaster-prone countries, this year. Typhoon Haiyan, one of the most ferocious storms on record to hit land, devastated large areas of the central Philippines in November 2013, leaving more than 7,300 dead and missing.