At least 13 people were killed and nine left missing after Typhoon Hagupit lashed through the country's southern region on Wednesday, authorities said.

More than 11.5 million people in Guangdong, Hainan and Guangxi provinces were affected by the disaster, with direct economic losses reaching 13.46 billion yuan ($1.97 billion), Ministry of Civil Affairs figures showed.

Hagupit, the strongest typhoon to hit Guangdong and its Pearl River Delta region in 12 years, reportedly headed south toward Vietnam on Thursday.

The typhoon killed nine people and left nine missing in Guangdong alone, causing direct economic losses of more than 7.7 billion yuan, Yang Minyi, a press official with the provincial flood, drought and wind prevention office, said yesterday.

Direct losses to agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery in the region were estimated at 4.2 billion yuan; industrial and transport sector, 1.5 billion yuan; and water conservancy infrastructure, 1 billion.

A total of 6.52 million people in 344 towns in the cities of Maoming, Yangjiang, Zhanjiang, Zhuhai, Zhongshan and Jiangmen in the Pearl River Delta region and in the west of Guangdong bore the brunt of the typhoon in the province.

More than 15,300 houses collapsed and 365,800 hectares of farmland were affected, authorities said.

Wang Yugui, a pig farmer in Maoming city, said Hagupit proved fatal to his business.

About two-thirds of his 4,000-odd pigs had drowned or were left missing in the typhoon.

"The typhoon has landed me in huge debt and I really don't know how to weather the losses," Wang told China Daily yesterday.

Wang said many others in the city suffered similar losses when Hagupit hit the city on Wednesday morning.

Hagupit also hit a South Korean freight vessel, named Zeus, in the waters off Jiangmen. All 17 sailors onboard were still missing, the Yangcheng Evening News reported on Friday.

(China Daily?September 27, 2008)