News from ABC (cut and paste)
Forty people were killed when a brief but violent hailstorm and torrential rain swept through a mountainous region of north-west China, the local government said on Sunday.
In just one hour dozens of people were killed, and dozens more injured, while more residents are missing and tens of thousands have had to be moved from their homes after rain and hail battered the Min county on Thursday.
Authorities have dispatched large numbers of tents and beds to the stricken area, but they have conceded many people still need relief supplies.
The storm "wreaked havoc" on all of the county's 18 townships and affected more than two-thirds of its 450,000 residents, the state-controlled Xinhua news agency reported.
"Roads were blocked, houses collapsed, farmland was destroyed, and the power supply and telecommunications services were disrupted by the extreme weather," the agency said, quoting Xu Guangyao, a senior county official.
The impoverished part of China has a history of destruction brought on by rain, in the summer of 2010, a mudslide there killed more than 1500 people.
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