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In pictures: Typhoon Mangkhut forces 2.5 million people to evacuate as it cuts through China

A powerful storm that is making its way across China has forced 2.5 million people out of their homes.

Typhoon Mangkhut has already killed dozens of people in the Philippines and destroyed buildings in Hong Kong.

Four people have died in the province of Guangdong as the storm moved deeper into southern China on Monday.

It has weakened from a typhoon to a tropical storm but was still affecting southern China’s coast and the provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan and rain and strong winds were expected to continue through Tuesday.

Hong Kong residents were told to stay away from the coastline and be on alert for occasional gales.

Bus, ferry and rail services were suspended and almost 900 flights were cancelled at the city’s airport, one of the world’s busiest.

The South China Morning Post said Hong Kong’s hospitals had to use back-up power due to outages caused by the storm.

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Philippine and Chinese authorities said the death toll from a typhoon has risen to at least 69 with dozens missing.

A Philippine national police report said the latest death toll was 65, with 43 people missing and 64 injured. Chinese authorities reported four deaths from falling trees and building materials in Guangdong, China’s manufacturing hub.

Many of the missing in the Philippines are gold miners and their families feared buried in a landslide after seeking shelter in a bunkhouse-turned-chapel in a village in Benguet province.

The Hong Kong Observatory reported Mangkhut was the most powerful cyclone to hit the city since 1979, packing maximum sustained gusts of 121 mph.

More than 2.4 million people had been evacuated in southern China’s Guangdong province by Sunday evening to flee the typhoon, state media said.

“Prepare for the worst,” Hong Kong Security Minister John Lee Ka-chiu urged residents.

That warning followed Mangkhut’s devastating march through the northern Philippines on Saturday with sustained winds of 127 miles per hour.