A new storm was threatening to dump heavy rain on the southern Philippines on Friday, as people in northern farming regions battled floods from deadly Typhoon Melor, authorities said.

A tropical depression, locally named "Onyok", was heading for the southern island of Mindanao as Melor moved further out to the South China Sea after claiming at least 20 lives, the government weather bureau reported Thursday.

Three Philippine soldiers were killed in a major assault on a Muslim extremist camp in the southern Philippines, the military said Wednesday.

The battle, involving as many as 150 members of the Abu Sayyaf group, was continuing for a third day on Wednesday, according to the military, which also reported several militant deaths that could not be verified.

Rescuers on speedboats hauled rain-soaked residents off rooftops in the Philippine countryside on Wednesday after Typhoon Melor killed at least 11 people and cut power for millions.

The typhoon, which tore in off the Pacific Ocean on Monday afternoon, caused widespread flooding across central islands and also dumped heavy rain on the sprawling capital of Manila.

Tattered lanterns, festive lights and tin roofs littered towns in the central Philippines on Tuesday after Typhoon Melor swept through, killing at least four people and leaving millions without power ahead of Christmas.

Distraught survivors surveyed their damaged homes on the eve of the traditional nine-day Christmas vigil that Filipinos observe with dawn masses and rice cakes.

More than 700,000 people in the central Philippines fled to safer areas for fear of giant waves, floods or landslides as Typhoon Melor slammed into the archipelago nation Monday, officials said.

Melor brushed the northern tip of Samar, a farming island of 1.5 million people, early Monday with winds gusting up to 185 kilometers (115 miles) per hour, the state weather bureau said. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

A strong tropical storm barreled toward the Philippines Sunday, threatening the disaster-prone nation's east coast with giant waves, flooding and landslides, civil defense officials warned.

Forecasters said Tropical Storm Melor could strengthen into a full-fledged typhoon by Monday afternoon when it is expected to strike the central island of Samar.

An inferno in one of Manila's huge shanty towns has killed nine people, authorities said Friday, the third blaze to have struck the city's slums in as many weeks.

Residents grabbed clothes, furniture and appliances as they fled the burning Damayang Lagi shanty town shortly after midnight, survivor Arman Altoveros told AFP.

The European Union announced on Wednesday that it was sharply boosting aid to the Philippines, largely to help sustain a peace process with Muslim rebels in the south.

EU ambassador Franz Jessen said the bloc was providing 5.5 million euros ($6 million) to five projects for the Muslim-dominated areas covered by the peace process even as the grouping more than doubled aid in general to the Philippines.

At least six people were killed when suspected Muslim guerrillas clashed with armed Christian settlers in the southern Philippines on Tuesday in a feud over land, police said.

At least 30 armed men, suspected to be from a Muslim rebel group, descended on the southern town of Tulunan on Mindanao island and began harassing Christian farmers at noon, said Senior Inspector Ronnie Dillera, the town police chief.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino urged legislators Tuesday to pass a draft law aimed at ending a decades-long Muslim revolt, citing the growing threat of global terrorism as one reason to do so.

Aquino, who has been struggling to get the law passed before his term ends next year, told lawmakers it would break "the cycle of violence and poverty that has stalled peace and progress" in the southern island of Mindanao, said his spokesman Herminio Coloma.