And in Xinyi, South China's Guangdong Province, landslides caused by torrential rain killed six people and left seven others injured.

At about 6pm on Tuesday, six people were injured in Xi'an, the province's capital, when gales caused advertisement billboards to topple over, according to Wei Xiaowu, an official with the municipal government office.

Another man was reported injured by a falling flowerpot in the city's Chang'an District due to the strong winds, Wei added.

A bus was also hit by a falling advertisement board; its front glass broken. No one was injured on the bus.

However, four workers in Pucheng County, some 100 kilometers from Xi'an in eastern Shaanxi, were killed when a building collapsed in the gales and heavy rain, and three more were seriously injured, according to the county's official.

Hui Rongjun, director of the county's government office, said the dead people were local farmers who worked for a private building company.

In Xinyi, South China's Guangdong Province, where six people died and seven injured in landslides, flooding caused by the torrential rain has affected 439,000 people in 23 townships, and damaged 15,502 houses, 13,900 hectares of cropland and five hydropower stations, local officials said yesterday.

Guangdong provincial and Xinyi city authorities have given priority to helping local residents. More than 250,000 people have been organized to aid rescue and relief work, and relief supplies have been dispatched to the landslide-ridden areas.

(Xinhua News Agency July 25, 2002)