One million flee tropical storm

A storm drenched China's southeast yesterday after killing five people on Taiwan and prompting the evacuation of 1.4 million people on the mainland, officials said, as the death toll from a separate storm in Vietnam rose to 55.

Krosa hit land as a typhoon at 3:30 p.m. in China's Zhejiang and Fujian provinces, but weakened and was downgraded to a tropical storm 90 minutes later, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

It said no deaths or injuries were reported, but Krosa wrecked houses and knocked out power in the port city of Wenzhou.

In Vietnam, the death toll from Typhoon Lekima, which hit the country's central coast late Wednesday, rose to 55, with another 16 people missing, officials said Sunday.

The Lekima death toll in Vietnam's worst-hit central province of Nghe An rose to 22 after eight more bodies were discovered over the past two days, said provincial disaster official Pham Hong Thuong.

"Communication to many parts of the province is still cut off," Thuong said. "The death toll is likely to rise."