One river in Laguna province has flooded most of lakeside Santa Cruz town [AFP]

The victims drowned in floods in Laguna province just south of Manila, the capital, the local disaster monitoring office said on Saturday.

In Laguna, military and police rescue boats worked to save people who were trapped on rooftops by a flashflood.

The typhoon, with winds of up to 185 kilometres (115 miles) an hour, was the third major storm to hit the Philippines' main island of Luzon in just five weeks.

'Concern' for evacuees

Valerie Lewin from the Oxfam aid group said that at least 155,000 people had been affected by the latest typhoon.

"The government has been quite well prepared [having learned from previous typhoons]," she said, "There has been a lot of pre-emptive evacuation.

"[However] a lot of people went back to the evacuation centre, and we are concerned about the hygiene of the centre at the moment.

"We are faced with some relocation sites that are definitely not appropriate for us to provide basic services."

The coastguard grounded 45 ferries in key ports on Luzon, stranding thousands of people returning to provinces for All Saints' Day, when many in the largely Roman Catholic country mark the deaths of relatives.

Power outages

The typhoon caused power outages, knocked down trees across many areas of Manila, and forced flights to be suspended on Saturday morning from the city's international airport.

One river in Laguna province flooded most of lakeside Santa Cruz town sending residents clambering onto roofs to escape rising waters, said Ariel Magcalas, the town's mayor.

"We cannot move, this is no joke ... The water is high. We need help," he said in a public address via Radio DZBB.

Rescue teams were dispatched to the flooded communities but were having difficulty moving in light trucks, said Fred Bragas, a regional disaster officer.

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