The residents of 2,500 villages were ordered to evacuate their homes as Severe Tropical Storm Nika (international name: Toraji) approached the northern Philippines, the government said Sunday, after three massive cyclones battered the country in less than a month.

Thousands of people were being forcibly evacuated from 2,500 villages in the northern Philippines on Monday as another typhoon hit the agricultural region that has already devastated by floods and landslides from three storms in less than a month.