Manila  - A large area of the northern Philippines was without power for a fourth day Tuesday as a powerful typhoon remained stalled over the country, having already killed 17 people, officials said.

Many roads were impassable due to floods in the northern provinces, according to the National Disaster Coordinating Council.

It said the entire provinces of Apayao, Kalinga, Abra and Ifugao have had no power since Saturday, when Parma slammed into the Philippines at full strength with maximum winds of 195 kilometres per hour (kph) and gusts of up to 230 kph.

Several towns in the provinces of La Union, Cagayan, Ilocos Sur and Ilocos Norte were also experiencing outages.

The weather bureau said Parma, which has now weakened to a tropical storm with maximum winds of 105 kph and gusts of up to 135 kph, would hover over the northern Philippines and southern Taiwan for a couple more days.

It noted that a stronger typhoon, Melor, was sucking Parma back into the Philippines.

Melor, packing maximum winds of 205 kph and gusts of up to 250 kph, was passing by the Philippines' north-east coast on its way to Okinawa, Japan.

The weather bureau said Melor was no direct threat to the Philippines.

Parma struck the Philippines just one week after tropical storm Ketsana triggered the worst floods in over 40 years in Manila and surrounding provinces.

Ketsana killed at least 295 people in the Philippines, with 39 still missing, before it wreaked havoc in other South-East Asian countries, killing 159 in Vietnam, 17 in Cambodia and 16 Laos.

Nearly 4 million people were affected by Ketsana, with more than 335,000 living in evacuation centres.

Damage to agriculture and infrastructure by the two weather disturbances has reached an estimated 10.55 billion pesos (224.5 million dollars) in the Philippines. (dpa)