TYPHOON HITS PHILIPPINES CAUSING MILLIONS WITHOUT POWER, 12 DEAD

MANILA, Philippines - Typhoon Nari pummeled the northern Philippines early Saturday, ripping roofs off buildings, killing 12 people and leaving more than two million without power.

Nari slammed into the country's east coast around midnight (1600 GMT Friday), toppling trees and pylons as it cut a westward swathe through the farming regions of the main island of Luzon, officials said.

Witnesses in the coastal town of Baler, near where Nari made landfall, said many large trees had been felled and clean-up crews with chainsaws were clearing the roads.

Government clerk Glenn Diwa, 34, said she and her husband spent a sleepless night as the typhoon roared through the town of Capas, 90 kilometres (55 miles) north of Manila.

As Nari moved inland, dumping rain, a wall of mud fell on a police barracks near the town of Magalang, killing an officer awaiting deployment to rescue typhoon victims, the civil defense office in the region said.

Elsewhere in central Luzon, an old woman and four minors were crushed to death when trees crashed onto two houses and a vehicle, while the wall of a school collapsed and crushed an old man to death.

Another man was electrocuted by a loose power line while yet another died of a heart attack in an incident that disaster officials also blamed on Nari.

Two children and an elderly person drowned in the province of Bulacan, which suffered widespread flooding, provincial governor Wilhelmino Alvarado told ABS-CBN television in an interview.

The network aired footage of earth-coloured floodwaters climbing above river defences and swamping farmland.

Soldiers, police, and local government workers used military trucks to rescue residents in flooded communities across the towns of San Miguel and Minalin, the regional 

civil defence office there said.

Source: Agency