Hundreds of families sheltered in schools and evacuation centres on Monday as heavy rains and gale-force winds from Super Typhoon Ragasa lashed the northern Philippines and southern Taiwan.

The typhoon, which is gaining strength as it proceeds on a collision course with southern China, was expected to make landfall over the Philippines’ Babuyan Islands by around midday.

The sparsely populated islands lie about 740 kilometres (460 miles) south of Taiwan in the Luzon Strait.

As of 8:00 am (0000 GMT), maximum sustained winds of 215 kilometres per hour were reported at the storm’s center, with gusts reaching up to 265 kph as it moved toward the archipelago nation, the national weather service said.

“We are now experiencing strong winds here in northern Cagayan,” provincial disaster chief R

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