BEIJING (dpa)
Authorities in China are bracing for another dangerous tropical storm, days after Typhoon Yagi left a trail of destruction in southern regions of the country.
Eastern China is due to be hit by Typhoon Bebinca on Sunday night, with Shanghai and the province of Zhejiang likely to be worst affected, the Chinese Meteorological Administration said on Saturday.
The storm is forecast to cause major disruption during the Lunar New Year holiday, when many of the country's 1.4 billion residents travel to visit family.
Authorities in Zhejiang, south of Shanghai, have raised emergency response levels and deployed thousands of relief workers to prepare for the impact of the typhoon, the state-run China Daily newspaper said.
Official Zhang Fa told the paper that residents are being urged to rethink travel plans and avoid dangerous areas along the coast.
Shanghai authorities said long-distance train services to Nanjing in Jiangsu Province and Kunming in Yunnan Province are being temporarily suspended on Monday.
Bebinca is likely to be less severe than Yagi, which reached super typhoon status and was recorded as the strongest autumn storm to hit China since 1949. It later caused hundreds of casualties in neighbouring Vietnam.
However, the new storm could still become a "strong typhoon" under the Chinese classification system, with warnings of waves reaching nine metres high in the East China Sea and up to five metres high in coastal areas.