At least 30 people were killed and over 100 went missing in China when rain-triggered natural disasters wreaked havoc across the country since Sunday, even as authorities today issued a national early disaster warning for the arrival of Typhoon Soulik.
Floods and landslides caused by the downpours have affected about 3.73 million people in 17 provincial-level regions, as well as forced the relocation of 212,000 residents, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said today.
Thirty people were killed and over 100 others remain missing in heavy floods and landslides triggered by rain storms since Sunday, the official media reported here.
The rainstorms also destroyed more than 8,400 houses and damaged another 113,000, causing direct economic losses of 8.56 billion yuan (around USD 1.4 billion), according to the ministry.
Meanwhile, the death toll from a landslide in southwest China's Sichuan Province has risen to 18 after six more bodies were retrieved, local authorities said.
So far the rescuers had found 18 bodies from the landslide that took place yesterday in the village of Sanxi in Dujiangyan City, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
An initial investigation showed that 107 people across the city were missing or cannot immediately be reached.
Local authorities are continuing to verify the exact number of those missing. Search and rescue work is underway.
The landslide, which had buried 11 homes in the region, is believed to have been triggered by severe rainstorms since Monday evening.
The affected area of the landslide is two-Km long, with about 1.5 million cubic meters of mud, rock and debris, said Qiao Jianping, a researcher with the Institute of Mountain and Environment under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The National Commission for Disaster Reduction and the Ministry of Civil Affairs issued the alert at 3 pm, as Soulik is expected to approach Taiwan's east coast early Friday and affect waters off the mainland's coastal provinces.
The alert came as the National Meteorological Center (NMC) continues to maintain its orange alert for Typhoon Soulik, the second-highest level on its four-tier typhoon warning system.
