China saw its 16th sandstorm this year from Monday to Tuesday, which swept some northern regions, according to its environment monitoring station in a report released in Beijing Wednesday.

The sandstorm started Monday afternoon in areas of the Alxa League in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and lasted about four hours.

Meanwhile, the central and northern areas of northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region also witnessed strong dusty weather and a small-scale sandstorm, lasting about one to two hours.

Tuesday afternoon, Inner Mongolia experienced a sandstorm again in its central and eastern areas, affecting the Sonid Left Banner and the Xilin Hot City and lasting two to four hours.

The report said this sandstorm was mainly confined to local regions and did not last for long, so it did not carry sand far across borders.

Sandstorms have posed a grave environmental scourge of northeast Asia. Almost every year from March to May since the late 1990s, strong cold winds from Siberia blow up a huge volume of yellow dust from the vast Gobi desert in Kazakhstan, Mongolia and north China.

(Xinhua News Agency May 20, 2004)