MANILA - TYPHOON Lupit was poised to slam into the north coast of the Philippines, forecasters said on Thursday, as the cyclone-devastated nation sought foreign aid to rebuild and to fight a deadly outbreak of disease.

After an erratic track over the past few days, the typhoon was set to make landfall with gusts of up to 195 kilometres an hour, chief government weather forecaster Prisco Nilo told a news conference.

'With the eye so close to land, it is highly unlikely that the typhoon would veer north to Taiwan and spare the Philippines,' he added.

According to the current track given by the weather service, the eye was expected to pass just south of Aparri town on Luzon island's northeast coast around 5am on Friday (2100 GMT on Thursday).

However, Mr Nilo said the typhoon should be over land for no more than 12 hours. 'This should mean comparatively less rainfall,' he added.

Floods, landslides and disease killed 1,050 people over the past month in the wake of tropical storms Ketsana and Parma, and the authorities said nearly 1.3 million people were still living in flooded conditions. Some 200,000 others were stranded at evacuation camps.