Evacuation as Vietnam braces for Typhoon
to move residents.
The government ordered that oil rigs and vessels be protected and it warned that about 62,000 fishing boats should not venture out to sea.
“Vietnam must ensure the safety of its oil rigs and vessels. If necessary, close the oil rigs and evacuate workers,” Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc was quoted as saying on a government website.
Schools were ordered to close in the southern commercial hub of Ho Chi Minh City on Monday, a working day in Vietnam.
Vietnam, like the Philippines, is regularly battered by typhoons that form over the warm waters of the Pacific and barrel westward into land.
Tembin will be the 16th major storm to hit Vietnam this year. The storms and other disasters have left 390 people dead or missing, according to official figures.
In the Philippines, rescue workers were still struggling to reach some remote areas hit by floods and landslides, as the death toll climbed to more than 240. Scores of people are still missing.
Devastation unclear
The full extent of the devastation was only becoming clear as the most remote areas were being reached.
Health worker Arturo Simbajon said nearly the entire coastal village of Anungan on the Zamboanga peninsula of Mindanao island had been wiped out by a barrage of broken logs, boulders and mud that swept down a river and out to sea.
“Only the mosque was left standing,” Simbajon said.
“People were watching the rising sea but did not expect the water to come from behind them.”
Manuel Luis Ochotorena, head of regional disaster agency, said he expected the death toll to rise.
“Many areas in Zamboanga Peninsula are still without power and communications, some towns are cut off due to collapsed bridges, floods and landslides,” he said.
Civil defense officials said some 13,000 Mindanao families — at least 52,000 people — remained in evacuation camps on Christmas Day, many with few if any possessions left.
The Philippines is battered by about 20 typhoons a year and warnings are routinely issued.
But disaster officials said many villagers had ignored warnings to leave coastal areas and move away from riverbanks.
In 2013, super typhoon Haiyan killed nearly 8,000 people and left 200,000 families homeless in the central Philippines.
The pardon could trigger one of the biggest political realignments in Peru since Fujimori fled to his parents’ homeland of Japan in 2000 as a corruption scandal brought his decade in power to an end.
Fujimori was extradited back to Peru in 2007 and later found guilty of commanding death squads that massacred civilians, bribing lawmakers and having a hand in the kidnapping a journalist, among other crimes.
Despite his downfall, the right-wing populist movement that Fujimori built in the 1990s has remained one of the most potent political forces in Peru.
His eldest daughter, Keiko, leads the opposition party Popular Force that controls Congress, while his youngest son, Kenji, has courted ties with Kuczynski’s government as he challenges his sister’s past decade of leadership of their father’s following.
On Thursday, Kenji led a surprise defection in Popular Force that narrowly saved Kuczynski from a motion to remove him from office in the wake of a graft scandal.
“To save his own skin he cut a deal with Fujimori’s supporters,” said Veronika Mendoza, a left-wing leader who competed against Kuczynski in last year’s presidential election.
Kuczynski’s has repeatedly denied allegations that a promise for a pardon was part of any political negotiation.
“We’re eternally grateful to you,” Kenji said on Twitter, noting that he was speaking for Fujimori’s family.
Fujimori was taken to hospital late on Saturday after suffering a severe drop in blood pressure and abnormal blood pressure that put his life at risk, according to his doctor, Alejandro Aguinaga, who denied allegations it was a ruse to legitimize a pending pardon.
Kenji said on Sunday that Fujimori was recovering in intensive care and would not likely to go home for a few days.