Natural disasters, mainly drought, gale, hailstone, floods and landslides, caused 40 deaths and left seven missing in May, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

Floods, including landslides and mud-rock flow, caused 80 percent of the deaths. Four of the fatalities were caused by forest fires, the ministry said on its website.

The disasters last month affected 22.5 million people and about 126,000 people were relocated by the government, it said.

The disasters affected 11.7 million hectares of crops and left more than 12,000 houses collapsed and 55,000 damaged, resulted in 4.82 billion yuan (705 million U.S. dollars) of economic losses, the ministry said.

The figures were incomparable to the same month of last year when a 8-magnitude earthquake hit southwestern Sichuan and affected some parts of Shaanxi and Gansu provinces on May 12.

The quake left more than 87,000 people dead or missing. Property loss was valued at more than 800 billion yuan (117 billion U.S. dollars), according to the latest official figures.

(Xinhua News Agency June 13, 2009)