Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Toll from Typhoon Ketsana rises to 38 in Vietnam: official

30/09/2009

People are seen transporting a motorcycle by using a boat down a flooded street as Typhoon Ketsana passed through the central Vietnamese city of Hue on September 29.(AFP/Hoang Dinh Nam)

The death toll from Typhoon Ketsana in Vietnam rose to at least 38 on Wednesday, officials said, after 246 died when the storm struck the Philippines over the weekend.

An official from the flood and storm control committee in the central Vietnam city of Danang said another 10 people were missing.

Central Vietnam bore the brunt of the typhoon's impact. At least 13 people died in Kon Tum, a mountainous inland province, officials said.

"We continue to collect provincial reports to know the exact number of victims," said the official who asked not to be named.

After making landfall early afternoon on Tuesday, the typhoon weakened during the night to become a tropical depression which had reached the border of neighbouring Laos, an official from the national storm centre in Hanoi told AFP.

In Cambodia, police and government officials said Wednesday that Ketsana had killed at least 11 people.

Vietnam suffers annually from tropical storms and typhoons. At least 41 people died in September 2008 when Typhoon Hagupit struck the country's north.

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