BEIJING - Forty-nine tourists stranded on an island off the coast of China's southern Guangdong province have been picked up and taken to safety as Typhoon Talas approaches, authorities said on Sunday.
The tourists belonged to four camping groups that had been stranded on Nanpeng island some 35 kilometres east of Yangjiang city on the mainland, the Transport Ministry said in a statement. The island is normally uninhabited.
On Sunday morning, all of the tourists were transferred safely to a ship and a helicopter dispatched by the Guangzhou-headquartered Nanhai Rescue Bureau of the Transport Ministry.
China's national observatory on Sunday morning renewed a blue alert for Typhoon Talas, which is expected to hit the southern island province of Hainan and Beibu Gulf.
At 9am (Thailand time) on Sunday, the eye of Talas was above the South China Sea some 60 kilemetres to the southwest of Sanya city in Hainan, packing winds of up to 23 metres per second, the National Meteorological Center (NMC) said.
The NMC forecast that Talas would move northwestward at a speed of about 20 kilometres per hour towards Beibu Gulf and make landfall on the northeast coast of Vietnam on Monday morning.
From Sunday afternoon to Monday afternoon, parts of the South China Sea, Beibu Gulf, Qiongzhou Strait, Hainan and coastal areas of Guangdong and Guangxi will experience strong winds.
Storms with up to 140 millimetres of precipitation are expected to affect parts of Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan.