Natural disasters across China in May claimed 159 lives and left 10 people missing, according to an official statement issued on Friday.
Disasters affected nearly 67.2 million people and forced the evacuation of 526,000 people to safer places, said the statement jointly released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the National Commission for Disaster Reduction.
About 45,000 houses collapsed and about 229,000 homes were damaged to varying degrees, and more than 4.9 million hectares of farmland were affected, with 178,400 hectares yielding no crops at all, according to authorities.
The disasters caused direct economic losses of 40.2 billion yuan (6.5 billion U.S. dollars), the statement said.
Natural disasters in May were mainly floods, wind and hail and geological hazards such as landslides.
