HANOI, Dec 5, 2007 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Natural disasters, mainly floods, whirlwinds and flood-tides, killed 117 people, left nine missing, and injured 88 in Vietnam in November, local newspaper Vietnam Economic Times reported Wednesday.
The disasters, mainly in the central region, also damaged over 400,000 houses, and many hectares of subsidiary crops and irrigation works, causing total property losses of over 3.4 trillion Vietnamese dong (VND) (212.5 million U.S. dollars) last month, the paper quoted a report of the country's General Statistics Office.
The disasters also made 340,300 people or 0.67 percent of Vietnam's farming population face hunger, said the report.
The Vietnamese government has recently approved the National Strategy on Natural Disaster Prevention, Response and Mitigation by 2020.
Natural disasters, including typhoons and hails, killed 339 people, left 274 people missing and injured 2,065 others in Vietnam in 2006. The estimated losses totaled 18.6 trillion VND ( nearly 1.2 billion dollars) in the year.