The death toll in China from Typhoon Saomai has risen to 319 by 10 PM Tuesday, after the discovery of 24 bodies in Fuding city, in southeast China's coastal province of Fujian.

Fuding government officials pulled 20 of the dead from the sea, bringing the number of bodies recovered from the waters off Shacheng harbor to 175.

Officials with Fujian's flood control and drought relief headquarters said the fishermen probably drowned when Saomai broke the moorings on their vessels as they sheltered in the harbor last Thursday.

Another four bodies were discovered on land among the rubble of homes destroyed in the gale.

The death toll in Fuding is likely to rise as 93 people remain missing in the city and search and rescue operations continue.

"This is the biggest calamity Fuding has even seen since 1949," said Yang Zhiying, Vice Director with the Fujian Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters.

Wind speed in Fuding, next to the Cangnan County in east China's Zhejiang Province where the typhoon swirled ashore, has reached 252 kilometers per hour when Saomai hit, according to the Fuding government.

All the houses within 20 kilometers to the sea were toppled down the moment Saomai landed. Across the city, over 80,000 houses were demolished.

Over 600 of the 2,600 fishing boats in Fuding sunk in the typhoon. Total economic loss in Fuding is 3.1 billion yuan (US$387.5 million), 15 times of the city's disposable revenue in 2005.

The city's new death toll has brought total fatalities in Fujian to 230.

Previous reports listed 87 dead and 52 missing in east China's Zhejiang Province, and two dead and one missing in nearby Jiangxi Province. Search for the missing is going on.

According to the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), strong tropical storm Wukong, named after the Chinese legendary figure Monkey King in classical novel Journey to the West, was located at latitude 29.9 north and longitude 134.9 east 400 kilometers to the Kyushu Island in Japan by 10 AM Wednesday.

"It may lash the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea with strong wind tomorrow and affect the weather in northeast China," said Ren Fumin, a researcher with the Climate Center of CMA. He believes that Wukong's impact in China will be limited.

(Xinhua News Agency August 16, 2006)