Monster Typhoon Haiyan Roars Into Philippines

Category five Typhoon Haiyan is the strongest storm to hit the Pacific region this year

Typhoon Haiyan is battering the Philippines with sustained winds of 235 km/h (146mph).

Meteorologists say that if initial estimates based on satellite images are borne out, it could be the most powerful storm ever to make landfall.

Schools and offices have been closed in the path of the storm, and thousands of people have been evacuated amid fears of serious damage.

The region was already struggling to recover from an earthquake last month.

The category-five storm was centred 62km (40 miles) south-east of Guiuan, in the country's Eastern Samar province, the national weather service said.

The governor of the Southern Leyte province, Roger Mercado, tweeted on Friday morning that fallen trees were blocking roads, hampering the relief effort.

The storm is not expected to directly hit the capital Manila, further north.

Mai Zamora, from the charity World Vision, in Cebu, told the BBC: "The wind here is whistling. It's so strong and the heavy downpours are continuing."

"We've been hearing from my colleagues in [the city of] Tacloban that they've seen galvanised iron sheets flying just like kites. It's actually all around the roads now. The roads are flooded in Tacloban," she added.

Roxane Sombise, a resident of Tacloban, in Leyte, told the BBC: "I think our house is actually shaking... I just want it to stop."

A teacher in Southern Leyte province told a local radio station that her school was "now packed with evacuees".

Jeff Masters, meteorology director at the private firm Weather Underground, said in a blog post that the damage from Haiyan's winds must have been "perhaps the greatest wind damage any city on Earth has endured from a tropical cyclone in the past century".

Source - BBC News