At least 38 people have been killed after a tornado, hail storms, gale force winds and torrential rains hit southern China, damaging thousands of homes and destroying crops.
The storms hit the giant southwestern municipality of Chongqing as well as neighbouring Guizhou and Hunan provinces overnight, leaving more than 190 people injured and at least six missing.
State television showed collapsed homes, uprooted and downed trees, landslides and partially flooded roads in Chongqing, where 29 people had died and more than 70,000 people have been displaced.
More than six inches of rain had fallen in parts of the region stricken by a severe drought since last year.
The storms were caused by a heat wave from the south colliding with a northern cold front, the report said, citing meteorologists.
Chongqing is a province-sized municipality which has a population of more than 30m people.
The cost of the damage in the six towns was expected to surpass 20 million yuan (€2.3m).
