The death toll from Typhoon Kaemi has risen to 32 on the Chinese mainland including six at a military barracks in east China's Jiangxi Province, with at least 65 others missing, confirmed local flood control sources on Friday noon.
Officials with the disaster relief office of east China's Anhui Province said, since Tuesday, the province has recorded four deaths from Kaemi, with three others seriously injured and another five missing.
By 8:00 on Friday morning, rough statistics showed approximately 21,000 hectares of farm land had been affected by the typhoon, with 2,695 houses collapsed and 26,100 people evacuated.
Earlier reports said Typhoon Kaemi, the fifth of the year, made landfall at 11:45 p.m. on July 24 at Taitung of Taiwan island, entered into the Tianwan Straits at around 4:00 a.m. on July 25 and hit Jinjiang of Fujian at 3:50 p.m. the same day.
The typhoon has brought continuous rainstorm and triggered landslides and floods as it swept the provinces of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi and Hunan. Regions affected also included Anhui. It has forced more than 700,000 people from these provinces to move to safer places.
Kaemi, meaning "ant" in Korean, weakened to tropical storm at 12:00 PM on Tuesday and then to tropical low pressure at 5:00 on Wednesday in Pinghe County, east China's Fujian Province.
(Xinhua News Agency July 28, 2006)
