Beijing – Chinese authorities said on Monday in Beijing that 14 people were killed and four missing in a typhoon in eastern China over the weekend.
It said Typhoon Soudelor made landfall on the south-eastern province of Fujian and moved to neighbouring Zhejiang and Jiangxi provinces before being downgraded to a tropical storm.
The authorities said the storm triggered mudslides in rural areas of Zhejiang.
China said 12 people were killed and four were missing in the hardest-hit city of Wenzhou, and two were killed in Lishui.
Provincial flood control officials said the victims were washed away by flash floods or buried in house collapses or landslides.
The typhoon forced 188,400 people to relocate.
Local media footage showed vehicles being picked up by gusts or buried in road cave-ins and people on the streets struggling to escape to safety.
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Meanwhile, the officials said in an update that Soudelor, packing maximum sustained winds of 173 kilometres per hour, earlier left 7 people dead and 5 missing in Taiwan.
Authorities on the island and more than 400 people were injured.
It said traffic lights and power lines were down in many parts of the island.
State-run Taiwan Power Company said the typhoon had caused electricity outages for about 4 million households, the biggest power loss ever to result from a typhoon in the island’s history.(dpa/NAN)
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