Vietnam storm death toll passes 122

VIETNAM: The death toll from tropical storm Mirinae in central Vietnam has passed 122, with damage estimated at more than five billion dong (about 280 million dollars), officials said Sunday.

Two people were still missing, according to a new report by the national flood and storm control committee, which also listed 145 injured.

The toll however did not include victims of a landslide which killed at least 13 people Thursday night in a province north of the region hardest-hit by Mirinae.

According to national statistics, Mirinae damaged or toppled more than 100,000 houses. Several hundred thousand hectares of cultivated land was also damaged or submerged in the passage of the storm.The priority was still “to supply disaster victims with food, drinking water and to sort out problems related to pollution of the environment,” an official from the national committee told AFP Sunday.

Mirinae weakened from a typhoon before it hit Vietnam Monday, after killing at least 27 people in the Philippines.

The two nations are regularly hit by deadly storms and floods.

At the end of September, Typhoon Ketsana killed a total of more than 500 people in the two countries.

Hanoi, Monday, AFP