Manila, May 27, (dpa/GNA) – Three people were killed and more than 5,000 displaced in the first tropical storm to batter the Philippines this year, police and the national disaster agency said on Monday.

The three fatalities were all from the province of Quezon, about 100 kilometres south-east of Manila, which bore the brunt of tropical storm Ewiniar’s strong winds and heavy rains.

One of the dead was a man who was sleeping inside his hut in the town of San Antonio in Quezon province on Sunday when a tree fell on it, hitting him, police said.

A 14-year-old boy also died after being hit by a falling tree in Lucena City on Sunday, police added.

In the coastal town of Pagbilao, a 7-month-old baby drowned in floods and his body was found off the shore on Sunday, a police report said.

The national disaster agency said 19,373 people were affected by the storm in 13 provinces, including 5,343 who were displaced and forced to stay in more than 80 evacuation centres.

The weather bureau said Ewiniar has strengthened into a typhoon and is now packing maximum sustained winds of 140 kilometres an hour (km/h) and gusts of up to 170 km/h.

It was moving north-eastward at 10km/h and was expected to leave the Philippines by Wednesday.

Ewiniar, locally known as Aghon, was the first cyclone to hit the Philippines this year. The archipelago is hit by an average of 20 tropical cyclones every year.

The strongest typhoon to ever hit the Philippines was Super Typhoon Haiyan, which killed 6,300 people and displaced more than 4 million in November 2013.GNA