Typhoon Usagi kills 25 people in southern China

PanARMENIAN.Net - Typhoon Usagi has killed at least 25 people in Guangdong province of south China, the government has said, according to BBC News.

Winds of up to 180 km/h (110 mph) were recorded in some areas, toppling trees and blowing cars off roads. Its victims drowned or were hit by debris. The storm has affected 3.5 million people on the Chinese mainland.

Trains from Guangzhou to Beijing have been suspended and hundreds of flights from Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hong Kong have been cancelled.

However, Hong Kong has escaped the worst of the storm.

Weather officials say that the ferocity of the storm has abated as it progressed into southern China, but financial markets in Hong Kong were closed for part of Monday, Sept 23 morning.

More than 80,000 people were moved to safety in Fujian province and the authorities have deployed at least 50,000 relief workers, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported. Power supplies in many parts of the province and in Guangdong have been cut off.

The typhoon caused 7,100 homes to collapse and led to direct economic losses of 3.24 bn yuan ($526m), Xinhua said.

Hong Kong's port - one of the world's busiest - shut down as the densely populated territory braced itself for the storm - the most powerful of this year.

Although officials say that Hong Kong escaped the worst ravages of the weather, the South China Morning Post said that Usagi still caused disruption and disarray, bringing flooding to some areas. More than 400 flights were cancelled or delayed, Hong Kong's Airport Authority said.

Usagi - which means rabbit in Japanese - had produced winds of 165 km/h (103 mph) as it closed in on China's densely populated Pearl River Delta.

China's National Meteorological Center warned that Usagi would bring gales and downpours to parts of the southern coast.

The storm hit just as millions were travelling for China's mid-Autumn festival - a national, three day holiday when many visit family - leading to flight and high speed train cancellations, our correspondent adds.

The storm killed two people on Friday as it crossed the Luzon Strait between Taiwan and the Philippines. Parts of the Philippines were badly hit by floods caused by the typhoon on Monday.

"The flood water is chest-deep in many areas," Kay Khonghun, mayor of Subic, a town northwest of Philippine capital Manila, told AFP. "The rain is pounding and the water keeps on rising."

Typhoons are common during the summer in parts of East Asia, where the warm moist air and low pressure conditions enable tropical cyclones to form.