By Mahmut Atanur
BEIJING (AA) – More than 1,070 people have been killed across China due to natural disasters this year, including over 830 confirmed dead since June amid weeks of storms and flooding.
State news agency Xinhua cited a ministry of civil affairs official as saying Tuesday that around 270 people remain missing since the beginning of 2016, including 233 unaccounted for since June.
Yang Xiaodong, deputy head of the ministry’s disaster relief department, said the disasters — the most serious of which included floods, strong winds, torrential downpour and a variety of geological disasters — had resulted in direct economic losses of 298 billion yuan ($44 billion) this year.
Around 400,000 houses were reported to have collapsed with 6.24 million residents evacuated — the majority over the past two months.
The regions to be hardest hit since June — with losses recorded at an estimated 253 billion yuan — include the provinces of Anhui, Fujian, Guizhou, Hebei, Hubei, Jiangsu and Jiangxi.
