China’s Typhoon Maysak death toll soars to 159 as region tallies catastrophic losses

The official death toll from Typhoon Maysak’s devastating floods in southern China jumped from 39 to 159 on Friday, as authorities updated the figures for the first time in six weeks.

According to media briefings held in Nanning and Guigang in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, 10 people remained missing and the disaster affected more than 1.65 million people, state news agency Xinhua reported.

The typhoon triggered “historically rare, large-scale and persistent heavy rainfall” in the province in early July, the authorities said. In Nanning, 90 towns were affected, 23,300 people were evacuated and 136 people died, including 107 following the collapse of two dams. In Guigang, 20,500 people were evacuated and 23 died, the local government said.

These two cities planned to recover within a year, with improvements to flood control and reservoir defences, the authorities said.

The last update to the death toll was on July 9, when the Nanning government said that at least 39 people were dead and nine were missing, including 26 killed in the aftermath of a dam breach at the Liulan Reservoir. No reason was given for the delay in the update.

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The typhoon, which first made landfall in Hainan province on July 3 and again between Guangxi and Vietnam the following day, inflicted more damage on the southern region than expected.