HANOI, Oct 6, 2006 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Death tolls from typhoon Xangsane, which began to hit Vietnam's central region last weekend, and flood triggered by it have risen to 71 as of Friday afternoon, a local official told Xinhua.
The typhoon and flooding also left two people missing and injured 524 others, said Nguyen Sy Nuoi, vice head of the Flood and Storm Prevention Department in charge of the central region under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
Central Da Nang city, the first locality hit by the typhoon, has suffered the biggest human losses with 26 deaths, followed by the central provinces of Quang Nam and Nghe An with 14 and 11 respectively, he noted.
The typhoon, the 6th one striking Vietnam this year, also damaged nearly 259,100 houses, uprooted thousands of trees and electric poles, and inundated many hectares of subsidiaries crops and aquaculture ponds in the localities, causing total property losses of nearly 10 trillion Vietnamese dong (over 628.9 million U. S. dollars).
Before affecting Vietnam, Xangsane, which means "elephant" in Lao language, had killed 197 people, and left at least 22 others missing in the Philippines.