At least three people were killed and another 143 were injured, including six seriously wounded, in an unexpected hurricane in Xiaoxian County, east China's Anhui Province, early Tuesday.

According to local media report, around 2:24 a.m. on Tuesday, ahurricane along with lightening and ear-piercing thunder swept through Xiaoxian in the northern part of Anhui, causing great damages to the county.

Apart from the deaths and injured, the hurricane also uprooted 460,000 trees, toppled 18,000 houses, destroyed 16,667 hectares ofcrops, and injured 1,000 large livestock and 30,000 domestic fowls.The disaster also destroyed facilities for power transmission and telecommunications, causing an eight-hour power blackout in the whole county, said an official with the Civil Affairs Bureau of Xiaoxian County.

In a related case, the office for disaster relief of the neighboring Dangshan County also reported that the county was struck by a gale and hailstone from 11 p.m. on Monday through to 1a.m. on Tuesday. No death or injury were reported yet in the disaster.

The natural disaster caused 73.8 million yuan (about (8.89 million US dollars) of direct economic losses and affected lives of 105,000 local people, according to the sources.

Source: Xinhua