Typhoon pounds China

BEIJING, July 31 (UPI) -- China reeled Thursday from Tropical Storm Fung-wong, blamed for five deaths and scores of injuries since it made landfall as a typhoon three days earlier.

Previously, Fung-wong killed two people in Taiwan and five in the Philippines.

Now a tropical storm, Fung-wong spawned a tornado and triggered flash flooding that left four people missing besides the five confirmed dead in eastern Jiangsu and southern Guangdong provinces.

The tornado Wednesday destroyed a clothing factory in Jiangsu's Linze town Wednesday. Four of the 90 people injured later died in a hospital, Xinhua reported.

The flash flooding in Guangdong's Heyuan city, killed one timber worker while four others were reported missing.

More than 3,000 people were marooned in the province's Zijin and Dongyuan counties, which remained under a severe weather alert.

Fung-wong, the eighth tropical storm to hit China this year, made landfall in Fuqing in Fujian province and later moved to the other provinces. Economic losses in Fujian already exceed $140 million, the report said.

Authorities had evacuated a total of 751,600 people across southeastern China in advance of the storm.

The report said the storm had affected the livelihood of 3.86 million people, flooded 277,000 acres of farmland and destroyed more than 1,500 houses.

Forecasters warned the weakened storm could still trigger more heavy rains and flooding as it moved northeastward toward Anhui and Shandong provinces.