BEIJING, (afp) - At least one person was killed and 21 others are missing at sea after Typhoon Durian slammed into southern China, causing up to 500 million dollars of damage, officials and state media said Tuesday.

The typhoon passed through the southern island of Hainan Sunday night before moving inland to Guangdong province where it caused most of the destruction.
Twelve people on board a boat which left the Hainan capital Haikou headed for Shekou port in Guangdong are missing, said the Shanghai-based Jiefang Daily. The paper said six others went missing when 10 boats -- three cargo vessels and seven fishing boats -- sank off the coast of Zhanjiang city in Guangdong. Three other people were missing along with their fishing boat from Maoming city in Guangdong. Twenty others in the city were injured when a market collapsed in heavy rain and strong winds.

Zhanjiang -- a coastal city of six million people in Guangdong -- bore the brunt of the typhoon. The winds and rain knocked out electricity and water supplies in urban areas as well as part of the telecommunications network. More than 11,300 houses in the city collapsed, said the Jiefang Daily.

Fields of sugar cane, banana, and undersea fish farms were severely damaged, the Yangcheng Evening News said. Trees were down, roads blocked and final examinations in schools were postponed. Farmers suffered much of the damage, and up to 1,000 fish farms off the coast of Zhanjiang sank.

More than 52,000 head of livestock were killed and 186,000 hectares (459,420 acres) of farmland affected, said the Jiefang Daily. Experts estimated the greatest loss would be to rice fields and lychee crops. In Zhanjiang's Yangdong county alone, the amount of lychees destroyed reached more than 5,000 tonnes, local media said.

The flood control office of Zhanjiang city told AFP that power and water supplies as well as transportation services had largely been restored. In Hainan, 30 flights were cancelled, stranding 2,000 passengers in Haikou, according to the Yangcheng Evening News. Some 1,700 passengers planning to take ferries to cross the Qiongzhou Strait between Hainan and Guangdong provinces were also stranded.

The total estimated economic loss for Guangdong province alone is 3.7 billion yuan (446 million dollars), said the official Xinhua news agency. The tropical storm headed further inland into southern Guangxi province Monday and is expected to die out Tuesday. Durian is the third typhoon to hit China this year and the shortest, lasting for four days. Typhoon Chebi last month ripped through the southeastern coastal region, killing up to 200 people.

Xinhua reported that 79 people were dead and 87 missing around the city of Fuzhou in Fujian province after Chebi, while 22 people died in a landslide in the city of Hangzhou. Total damage was put at around 420 million dollars.