BEIJING – Hurricane-force winds, freak hailstorms, pounding rain and a tornado killed 78 people in China’s eastern province of Jiangsu on Thursday and injured nearly 500 others, Xinhua reported.

Whole villages were levelled and huge trees felled when winds of up to 125 kilometres (77 miles) per hour struck around Yancheng city, China’s official news agency said.

Some 200 people were left critically injured by the storms and the worst tornado in half a century, which reduced buildings to rubble.

Photos of the scene showed dazed residents near the remains of houses surrounded by tangled telephone wires, splintered wood and toppled poles.

“It was like the end of the world,” said Xie Litian, 62, from Donggou township in Funing County, describing how all the other houses in his neighbourhood had been destroyed.

“I heard the gales and ran upstairs to shut the windows,” he told Xinhua.

“I had hardly reached the top of the stairs when I heard a boom and saw the entire wall with the windows on it torn away.” President Xi Jinping ordered “all-out rescue efforts” after what Xinhua said was one of the worst disasters ever to hit Jiangsu.

Citizens in Yancheng used social media to offer help to those affected, from medical assistance to using heavy lifting equipment for free.

Crane operator Xiang Shanfeng said he had pulled dozens of people from rubble during the day after posting his number on messaging service WeChat.

“The losses were astonishing,” Xinhua quoted him as saying.

Many parts of China have been lashed by torrential rains this week as summer rainstorms have been heavier than usual, causing damage across the country.

Flooding is common during the summer monsoon season in the south of China, but rainfall has been particularly heavy this year.

In the centre of the country, heavy floods have killed 22 people and displaced 197,000, state media said on Monday.

Eight people were trapped in a flooded coal mine in southwest China’s Guizhou province, Xinhua reported.

Direct economic losses from the floods hit nearly 2.7 billion yuan ($410 million), state media said.

Vice premier Wang Yang said days earlier that China faced volatile weather conditions due to the influence of the El Nino weather system.

HONG KONG – A firefighter died on Thursday after battling a fire in Hong Kong that has lasted for almost three days, the second killed by the rare large blaze in the southern Chinese city.

The fire broke out at a self-storage unit in a multi-storey industrial building in the East Kowloon area on Tuesday morning.

Firefighters have been struggling to contain the blaze, which has already claimed the life of a senior station officer.

Fireman Hui Chi-kit, 37, died while fighting the fire on Thursday night, while two others have been sent to hospital with serious injuries.

“We had a team on the third floor extinguishing the fire… When there was duty handover, they discovered Hui was unconscious,” fire department director Lai Man-hin told reporters.

“All of our colleagues immediately began rescuing him and brought him to the ambulance,” said Lai, who looked exhausted.

Television footage showed firemen carrying an unconscious colleague from the burning building and paramedics conducting cardiopulmonary resuscitation on him.

Two firemen were hospitalised Thursday in serious condition, a government spokesman told AFP, while nine others have been discharged.

The fire department said they had encountered difficulty in controlling the fire, which broke out in a building containing 200 storage units.

“One of the biggest difficulties is that the temperature is very high… every unit is separated by a metal sheet,” Lam said.

Large fires are rare in Hong Kong. In 2011, a blaze engulfed a residential tower and tourist market, killing nine people and injuring 30.

JAKARTA/MANILA – Southeast Asian militants who claim to be fighting for Islamic State in the Middle East have said they have chosen one of the most wanted men in the Philippines to head a regional faction of the ultra-radical group, security officials said on Thursday.

The claim was made in a video that was recently posted on social media, possibly last week, a military intelligence official in the Philippines told Reuters.

The video is significant, experts say, because it shows that Islamic State supporters are now being asked to stay home and unify under one umbrella group to launch attacks in Southeast Asia, instead of being drawn to the fight in the Middle East.

Authorities in the region have been on heightened alert since Islamic State claimed an attack in the Indonesian capital Jakarta in January in which eight people were killed, including four of the attackers.

In the 20-minute video seen by Reuters, young men and some children in military fatigues are shown carrying and training with weapons, and holding Islamic State flags. A section of the video showed some of these men engaging in gunbattles in jungles but it was not clear where and with whom.

The video also showed three men apparently being executed, but it was not clear where and who they were.

The authenticity of the video and when it was taken could not be independently verified.

In the video, a man authorities in Malaysia have identified as Mohd Rafi Udin, a Malaysian militant currently in Syria, says in Malay: “If you cannot go to (Syria), join up and go to the Philippines.”

In the video, Udin also urges Muslims to unite under the leadership of Abu Abdullah, a Philippine militant leader who pledged allegiance to Islamic State in January.

ISIS activities in Southeast Asia

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BHM, The Star/ANN, Royal Malaysian Police, Utusan Malaysia, AFP, Reuters, YouTube screengrabs

Abu Abdullah, also known as Isnilon Hapilon, is a leader of the Philippine militant group Abu Sayyaf. He is on the FBI’s most wanted list for his role in the kidnapping of 17 Filipinos and three Americans in 2001 and carries a bounty of US$5 million (S$6.7 million).

The video was released to mark Islamic State’s acceptance of allegiances from jihadists in the Philippines, the first formal recognition of a Southeast Asian group, said Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay, chief of Malaysia’s police counter-terrorism unit.

“This video is not just propaganda, but is a serious threat. We are definitely expecting more attacks in this region,”Pitchay told Reuters.

Hapilon is known to be based in the interior hills of the island of Basilan in the Mindanao region of the southern Philippines. In April, at least 18 Philippine soldiers were killed and 53 wounded in an attack on his followers on the island.

KIDNAP GANG

For decades, Abu Sayyaf has been known for extortion, kidnappings, beheadings and bombings, and is one of the most brutal Muslim rebel factions in the south of the largely Christian Philippines.

The group has posted videos on social media sites this year pledging allegiance to Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.

The latest video appears aimed at recognising Hapilon as the Southeast Asian leader of the group, anti-terrorism experts said.

“I think this is a very significant video,” said Sidney Jones, a Jakarta-based security expert. “This acknowledges support from Indonesia and Malaysia.”

“It suggests there will be more efforts to get people to actually go to Mindanao to launch operations from there.”

The Jakarta attacks in January were claimed by Islamic State. But the attack did not bear the hallmarks of other spectacular strikes by the radical group – the militants lacked sophisticated weaponry and were amateurish in the execution.

Some security officials fear a more organised and better trained militant group could launch far deadlier attacks in the region.

But Philippine military officials dismissed these concerns, saying the video was just propaganda and should be ignored. “People should not be bothered by this,” said Philippine military spokesman Restituto Padilla

“Authorities are working on this. They can be identified, and they can be hunted down.”

Children recruited by ISIS to be part of horrific killings, executions

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