A fishing boat is moored to take shelter from Typhoon Wutip in the waters near a waterfront square in Yinggehai Town, China. -- Photo: Xinhua
HANOI (AFP): Typhoon winds and rains that lashed central Vietnam killed five people and left two more missing, according to an official toll, with huge tracts of farmland flooded by the deluge.
Typhoon Wutip made landfall in southern China on Saturday with winds gusting up to 128 kilometres per hour (80 miles per hour) and was downgraded to a tropical storm after swooping up the Gulf of Tonkin on Vietnam's flank.
Vietnam's agriculture ministry said on Saturday evening that three people had been killed in central Quang Tri province, with two more fatalities and two people missing in Quang Binh province.
More than 70,000 hectares (172,000 acres) of cropland were flooded, the ministry said.
Chinese authorities on the southern island of Hainan evacuated thousands of people, closed schools and halted rail services on Friday ahead of the storm's landfall.
However, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center forecast on Saturday that the storm would "weaken to dissipation" by the end of the weekend.
Natural disasters are becoming more severe and more frequent as a result of climate change. They claimed 514 lives in Vietnam last year, three times more than in 2023, according to the agriculture ministry.
In September, northern Vietnam was devastated by Typhoon Yagi, which killed 345 people and caused an estimated economic loss of $3.3 billion. - AFP
