China evacuates nearly two million people as powerful typhoon makes landfall

A storm as wide as France has driven nearly two million people from their homes, the second typhoon to batter China in a single week.

Typhoon Bavi made landfall in the coastal city of Taizhou on Saturday evening before striking Wenzhou again around midnight, prompting the evacuation of more than 1.7 million people in Zhejiang province and thousands more nearby. The storm, which spans 1,000km at its widest point, began as a super typhoon that hammered Guam with 290km/h winds and triggered landslides that killed at least 17 people in the Philippines. Now weakened to a severe tropical storm, Bavi has grounded 400 flights and suspended schools across Zhejiang as it tracks north-west toward Anhui and the Shandong Peninsula. It arrives with parts of southern China still reeling from Typhoon Maysak, which left at least 39 people dead earlier in the week.