The epicentre of the powerful storm, which left at least 16 people dead in southern China on Monday, hit Vietnam's Thanh Hoa province with winds of more than 100 kilometres (60 miles) per hour, a central government weather spokesman said.

At least one person died in a house collapse in northern Thanh Hoa, south of Nam Dinh province, and several people were injured elsewhere, said a weather official who declined to be identified.

Vietnamese officials have released no casualty toll.

In Nam Dinh and Thanh Hoa, the storm destroyed some of the protective dykes that had already taken a battering from an unusually tough season of tropical storms.

Authorities mobilized 30,000 troops and police and moved some 300,000 people before the storm hit.

An AFP photographer said several streets in Nam Dinh city were flooded, electricity supply was knocked out and almost all shops had shut.

"The serious floods sparked panic among people living in two adjoining districts in Nam Dinh and Thanh Hoa," a Vietnamese journalist told AFP.

"Four-metre (13-foot) waves breached the dykes in these two districts and flooded inhabited areas from where the authorities are still trying to evacuate people," he said.

Vast tracts of farmland were under water.

"Damrey is the most powerful typhoon to hit Vietnam in several years," said the central weather spokesman. "It's the biggest (ever) campaign to evacuate people in the face of a violent typhoon in Vietnam."

In Nam Dinh, weather official Tran Dinh Cao said his "greatest worry" was the danger to 60 kilometres of dykes in the province.

"People living in areas close to the sea have gone in search of higher ground in order to escape the winds and torrential rains," Cao said. "We have yet to figure out casualty figures. Everyone is fleeing from the waters."

His counterpart Nguyen Quang Hung in Thanh Hoa said the entire province had lost electricity supplies and houses as well as several public buildings had been destroyed.

"We have lost contact with three fishing boats in the sea," he said.

A civil aviation official said 10 flights from the Noi Bai international airport in Vietnam's capital, Hanoi, were cancelled or delayed, leaving about 1,000 passengers stranded.

The typhoon has since weakened greatly after hitting mountain ranges along the Vietnam-Laos border and dumping heavy rain there, weather officials said.

Damrey, whose name means elephant in Cambodian, on Monday brought 15 hours of raging winds and rains to the Chinese island province of Hainan, where it destroyed homes, stranded travellers and left much of the island without electricity.

China's Civil Affairs Ministry said that as of Monday night the storm had caused nearly 8.5 billion yuan (1.05 billion dollars) in damages in Hainan, Guangdong and Guangxi provinces, while 436,000 people had been evacuated.

Some 3.9 million residents of Hainan and another 1.8 million people in Guangdong province were affected by the storm, the ministry said.

Press reports said the storm was the biggest to hit Hainan in 30 years. Residents of the coastal county of Xuwen in Guangdong said it was the strongest in their area in 60 years.

The region is prone to tropical storms and typhoons, two of which caused widespread destruction in China and killed scores of people this month. Community
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