Typhoon batters central Vietnam coast

HANOI (Reuters) - Typhoon Xangsane's heavy rains and fierce winds battered the central Vietnam coastline on Sunday after authorities evacuated 200,000 people, called in fishing vessels and canceled domestic flights.

Officials in Danang, Vietnam's fourth largest city of about 1 million, said they expected the popular resort to take the brunt of the storm, which left a trail of destruction last week in the Philippines, killing at least 61 people with scores missing.

State-run Vietnam Television on Sunday showed footage of trees felled by wind and rains and choppy waters overflowing from the city's Han river. Power pylons were damaged and some towns were without electricity.

"The most worrisome issue is the rising floodwaters in rivers and the risk of landslides in the mountains around here," Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Sinh Hung told Vietnam Television in Danang.

Hung said it was not yet known whether anyone was killed, but he said about a thousand houses lost their roofs and there were some injuries.

The storm was a category 2 typhoon that can carry winds of 154-177 kph (96-110 mph), downgraded from a category 4 typhoon on Saturday as it crossed the South China Sea westward to Vietnam from the Philippines.

It was forecast to weaken further over land, but it could still cause serious damage to the mostly-rural, densely populated Southeast Asian country of 83 million.

"The wind has blown away roofs of cottages in villages near the beach but concrete buildings are still OK for now but no one dares to go outside," a resident in the UNESCO-Heritage town of Hoi An, near Danang, told Reuters by telephone.

National weather forecasters said the typhoon would skirt important coffee-growing areas in the Central Highlands. They said that Kontum, the smallest coffee-growing province, would be affected in the next two days, although the storm was forecast to weaken further once it moved inland.

Vietnam is the world's second largest coffee grower after Brazil.

Typhoon Xangsane, which means "elephant" in the Lao language, spurred Vietnamese authorities into a massive evacuation of the central region and calling fishing vessels to shore.

Vietnam Televison reported on Saturday night that more than 200,000 people in four central provinces had been evacuated in the biggest such operation in three decades.

Authorities in Communist-run Vietnam wanted to avoid a repeat of Typhoon Chanchu that struck in May, when 267 people, mostly fishermen, were killed or unaccounted for.

Vietnam's storm forecast system was criticised for failing to predict the storm's direction.

Since Friday, fishing vessels have been called in and urged to take shelter, but officials said on Saturday they were unable to make contact with about 500 boats.

Vietnam Airlines grounded all domestic flights while international flights were re-routed around the storm.

(Additional reporting by Nguyen Nhat Lam)