BEIJING - THE death toll from floods and mudslides triggered by Typhoon Kammuri in southwest China has doubled to 40 with six people still missing on Wednesday.

Kammuri, the third tropical storm to hit China this year, slammed into the southern province of Guangdong on Wednesday last week, before moving west to Guangxi and then Yunnan.

More than 16,000 residents were relocated as houses belonging to some 3,300 households collapsed following days of torrential rain, Xinhua said.

A total of 1.25 million people in the mountainous frontier province of Yunnan were 'affected', it said. Crops were inundated and roads and other infrastructure destroyed, Xinhua said.

In Vietnam, at least 120 people were killed after the remnants of Kammuri caused the country's worst floods in four decades. Another 44 are missing.

Typhoons and tropical storms regularly hit China, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam in the summer and autumn, gathering strength from the warm waters of the Pacific Ocean or the South China Sea before weakening over land.

Flooding is a perennial woe for much of southern and eastern China, with poor rural areas sharing most of the casualties and losses. -- REUTERS