Aid agencies were on standby on Wednesday to respond to the strongest typhoon to threaten the Philippines in three years, which was due to make landfall later in the day with widespread damage expected.

Hurricane Patricia is racing towards southwestern Mexico and the monster storm has been called the strongest tropical cyclone on record, according to the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization.

Villagers fled coastal homes and sparked panic-buying in grocery stores and gas stations in the central Philippines on Thursday as an approaching powerful storm brought back nightmares of last year's deadly onslaught from Typhoon Haiyan.

A look at some of the week's most captivating and powerful photos.

With last year's Super Typhoon Haiyan still fresh in people's minds, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos fled threatened areas Tuesday in advance of Typhoon Rammasun.

A strong typhoon was blowing over the Pacific Ocean in the northeastern Philippines on Sunday and may induce heavy rains, but is too far off to hit land, officials said.

When local Filipino woman Nenita Yap, 44, heard the news of Typhoon Haiyan, she prayed for her family members there.

The average annual cost of natural disasters has quadrupled over the last three decades, and it makes economic sense to boost spending on preparedness, a European official said Thursday.

American photographer John Stanmeyer won the World Press Photo of the Year award for 2013 on Friday with a moonlit shot of African migrants in Djibouti holding their cellphones to the sky, seeking a better reception signal.

The typhoon-ravaged Tacloban area of Philippines had a surprise visitor when soccer icon David Beckham arrived in a UNICEF plane on Thursday.