Tropical storm Prapiroon has killed at least 77 people as of yesterday in south China's Guangdong Province and the neighboring Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, despite the relocation of more than 660,000 people from threatened areas, Xinhua News Agency reported.

The latest casualties were from Guangxi, where Prapiroon has continued to cause damage despite weakening from typhoon to a tropical storm.

Prapiroon has set off flash floods and landslides and razed houses to kill 26 in Guangxi, Xinhua said.

The Guangxi civil affairs department said Prapiroon affected 5.1 million people in the region, toppling 9,300 houses and ruining crops on 195,900 hectares of farmland.

Prapiroon made landfall at the South China coastal area in western Guangdong on Thursday, leaving at least 51 dead in that province alone.

As the sixth typhoon of the year, Prapiroon packed strong winds and dumped torrential rains in Guangdong, with Taishan, Enping, and Yangchun being worst hit, affecting 3.72 million people and razing 7,000 houses. Direct economic losses are forecast at 2.4 billion yuan (US$300 million).

Last month, China witnessed the most and strongest natural calamities this year, which left 918 dead, 310 missing and a direct economic loss of about 68.8 billion yuan (US$8.6 billion), figures from a Thursday conference of multiple ministries reporting and summarizing natural disasters in July showed.

Bilis, the fourth typhoon in this storm season, brought the country the most fatalities, with 637 deaths and 210 missing. Typhoon-induced flash floods, landslides and mud-rock flows in 20 provinces and autonomous regions were primarily blamed for a large number of the casualties, said Chen Hongling from the Ministry of Civil Affairs at the conference.

A 370-year-old castle in east China's Fujian Province has collapsed after being hit by typhoons that repeatedly swept the area over the past three months.

Nine houses in the Caipu Castle, in Fujian's Yunxiao County, fell down after being soaked in floodwaters for weeks while more than 200 square metres of the outer wall collapsed, a county cultural official said yesterday.

"Fortunately nobody was injured or killed," said Tang Yuxian, curator of the county museum.

The moat has often flooded the castle since mid-May, when typhoon Chanchu slashed southern and eastern China. Bilis and Kaemi followed, setting off floods and landslides to kill hundreds of people.

More than 200 families live in the castle, which is 500 meters in circumference.

The castle was built in 1636 and was the only round castle made of a mixture of lime, clay and sand that still exists in Fujian, said Tang.

In contrast to the threatening rising water level, Sichuan, Hubei and Guizhou provinces were suffering from serious and lasting drought.

This month will likely see another two or three tropical storms striking China, said Chen Yu, senior engineer from China Meteorological Administration.

China also experienced its worst and most geological calamities of this year in July, according to Tang Can, senior engineer from the Ministry of Land and Resources.

Statistics showed that more than 80,000 earthquakes occurred last month, causing 259 deaths with 75 missing.

The most serious tremor, measuring 5.1 on the Richer scale, led to 22 deaths in Yunnan Province.

(China Daily August 7, 2006)