Floods, typhoon leave 105 dead, 115 missing in China

A total of 105 people died and another 115 are missing after floods ravaged northeast China and a typhoon lashed southern regions, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said Monday. Northeastern China's Liaoning Province and south China's Guangdong Province have reported the most number of casualties from the disasters, with 54 deaths and 22 deaths respectively as of 9 a.m. Monday. Rain-triggered floods that started to hit northeast China on Wednesday also left 15 and three people dead in Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces respectively, the ministry said, citing reports from local agencies. Ninety-seven and six people are missing respectively in Liaoning and Jilin. The floods have caused total crop failure to more than 256,000 hectares of farmland in northeast China, one of the country's major breadbaskets. Typhoon Utor continued to wreak havoc in China's southern regions after making landfall Wednesday in Guangdong and has killed 22 people, with eight more missing in the province. Neighboring Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Hunan Province reported six and five deaths from the typhoon respectively. Besides damaging houses and farmland, the floods and typhoon affected 3.72 million people in northeast China and 8.37 million in the south, including 6.67 million in Guangdong, according the the ministry. The disasters have caused direct economic losses of 9.86 billion yuan (1.6 billion U.S. dollars) in northeast China and more than 10 billion yuan in south China's Guangdong, Guangxi and Hunan, with 8.63 billion in Guangdong alone.