South China province recovering following typhoon

GUANGZHOU/KUNMING - After being hit hardest by the country's strongest typhoon of the year, southern China's Guangdong province has started to resume traffic and power supply in affected areas.

Typhoon Hato, arrived in neighboring Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on Thursday morning, nearly 20 hours after it made landfall in the city of Zhuhai in Guangdong.

Bringing heavy gusts and rainstorms, Hato has left at least nine people dead in Guangdong and Macao, as well as one missing in the province and two more in the special administrative region.

Train services between Guangzhou, the provincial capital, and the city of Shenzhen resumed from 4 pm Wednesday, and more trains linking Guangzhou and other cities in Guangdong will resume Thursday, according to Guangzhou Railway Group.

Ferry services resumed Wednesday night on the Qiongzhou Strait, a major gateway to China's southernmost island province of Hainan.

More than 2.7 million Guangdong households had their electricity supplies disrupted, but three-quarters now have power back, according to China Southern Power Grid.

Three coastal nuclear power stations remain unharmed.

Hato is forecast to move west at speeds between 25 km to 30 km per hour and weaken into a tropical depression on Thursday afternoon, according to the National Meteorological Center.

Hato also brought downpours in several places in southwest China's Yunnan province Wednesday. As a result of the typhoon, floods in Yunnan have left one person dead and two injured, local authorities said Thursday.

The Yunnan Provincial Meteorological Bureau forecast that rainstorms will continue to batter western, central and southern parts of the province on Friday.

The province also issued warning alerts Thursday for geological disasters and floods in its mountainous regions.

Neighboring Sichuan province was also affected by Hato. The Sichuan provincial meteorological station forecast that from Thursday night to Friday, Hato will bring rainstorms to southern areas of the province.