MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A powerful typhoon was forecast to hit the northern Philippines on Thursday, prompting another round of evacuations in a region still recovering from back-to-back storms weeks ago.

Typhoon Yinxing is the 13th to hit the disaster-prone Southeast Asian nation this season.

“I really feel sorry for our people, but they are all tough,” Gov. Marilou Cayco of Batanes province said by phone. Her province has been ravaged by recent destructive storms and is expected to be affected by Yinxing’s strong wind and rain.

Tens of thousands of villagers were returning to emergency shelters, and disaster response teams were again put on alert in Cagayan and other northern provinces near the expected path of Yinxing. The typhoon was located about 175 kilometers (109 miles) east of Aparri town in Cagayan province on Thursday morning.

The slow-moving typhoon, locally named Marce, had sustained winds of up to 165 kilometers (102 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 205 km/h (127 mph) and was forecast to hit or come very close to Cagayan coast. and the outlying islands later Thursday.

The coast guard, army, air force and police were put on alert. Inter-island ferry and cargo services and domestic flights were suspended in the northern provinces.

Tropical Storm Trami and Typhoon Kong-rey hit the northern Philippines in recent weeks, leaving at least 151 people dead and affecting nearly 9 million others. More than 14 billion pesos ($241 million) in rice, corn and other crops and infrastructure were damaged.

The death and destruction from the storms prompted President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to declare a day of national mourning on Monday as he visited the worst-hit Batangas province, south of the capital, Manila. At least 61 people have died in the coastal province.

Trami dumped one to two months worth of rain in just 24 hours in some regions, including Batangas.

“We want to avoid the loss of human lives due to calamities,” Marcos said in Talisay City in Batangas, where he brought key cabinet members to assure storm victims of swift government aid. “Storms these days are more intense, larger and more powerful.”

In 2013, Typhoon Haiyanone of the strongest tropical cyclones on record, it left more than 7,300 people dead or missing, flattened entire villages and caused shipwrecks and crushed houses in the central Philippines.