Typhoon Fanapi leaves 70 dead in China

Rescuers combing the mud-slide debris found more than a dozen bodies, bringing the death toll to 70 in south China's Guangdong Province, while 65 people remain missing, local disaster relief authorities said.

The bodies were recovered after rescue crews entered towns cut off by mud-slides such as Magui Township in Maoming City, the state-run Xinhua news agency quoted the officials as saying. On Friday, helicopters were dispatched to send relief goods -- bottled water, food, and tents, to floods-isolated areas in the hardest-hit counties of Gaozhou, Xinyi and Yangchun.

By yesterday, about 99,500 people in Guangdong were evacuated for the Fanapi-brought disasters. Some 3,765 houses collapsed, 42,190 hectares of farmland were damaged, and the economic loss reached 2.4 billion yuan, the officials said.

Typhoon Fanapi, the 11th and strongest typhoon that hit China this year, landed in Fujian Province on Monday, but wreaked most havoc in Guangdong, which neighbours Fujian on the south. No casualties have been reported in Fujian.