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U.N. holds emergency meeting in Asia as China battles African swine fever

FILE PHOTO: Piglets are seen by a sow at a pig farm in Zhoukou, Henan province, China June 3, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer

BEIJING (Reuters) – The United Nations is holding an emergency meeting this week with animal health experts in Asia to discuss the threat of African swine fever after the first outbreak of the disease in the region was discovered in China last month.

China has detected eight cases of the highly contagious virus since discovering the first outbreak on Aug. 3, raising concerns about its spread in the world’s largest pork producer and beyond its borders into Southeast Asia.

Its arrival in China marked a new front in the battle to control the disease, which has traveled from Europe over the past decade through Russia.

(Outbreaks of African swine fever in China by location: https://reut.rs/2PCNswR)

First detected in Africa almost a century ago, the virus is often deadly for pigs but does not harm humans.

Specialists from China and nine countries close by and considered to be at risk from a spread of the disease are attending the meeting running from Wednesday to Friday in Bangkok, along with experts from outside the region and participants from the private commercial swine sector.

The nine countries are Cambodia, Japan, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam, the UN’s Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a statement on Wednesday.

The FAO has repeatedly warned that the arrival of the disease poses a significant threat to Asia.

“It’s critical that this region be ready for the very real possibility that (swine fever) could jump the border into other countries,” said Wantanee Kalpravidh, regional manager of the FAO Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases (ECTAD) in Asia.

“That’s why this emergency meeting has been convened – to assess where we are now – and to determine how we can work together in a coordinated, regional response to this serious situation.”

Chinese authorities are rushing to contain the virus, shutting live markets in infected provinces and banning transportation of live pigs and pork products in and out of those regions.

Highlighting the challenge though, South Korea had to ramp up quarantine measures at airports after finding a traveler carrying Chinese food infected with the disease.

The seminar will review recent research studies and technologies and consider lessons from recent and ongoing episodes in Europe, it said.

The disease is transmitted by ticks and direct contact between animals, and can also travel via contaminated food, animal feed, and people traveling from one place to another. There is no vaccine.

(Reporting by Josephine Mason; Editing by Joseph Radford)

Record number of U.S. Marines to train in Australia in symbolic challenge to China

FILE PHOTO - U.S. Marines aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard amphibious assault ship stand in formation during a ceremony marking the start of Talisman Saber 2017, a biennial joint military exercise between the United States and Australia aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard amphibious assault ship on the the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Sydney, Australia, June 29, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Reed/File Photo

By Colin Packham

SYDNEY (Reuters) – The United States will deploy a record number of Marines to train in Australia, the Australian defense minister said on Friday, as Washington seeks to counter what it describes as Chinese aggression in the region.

Payne said 1,587 U.S. Marines will spend six months training in Australia’s remote north, an increase of nearly 27 percent on its 2017 rotation for the program known as the Force Posture Initiatives.

“The U.S. military plays a vital role in underwriting security and stability across the Indo-Pacific, and the Force Posture Initiatives will be an essential component in preserving stability and security over the coming decades,” Defence Minister Marise Payne said in a statement.

The deployment, first introduced in 2011 as part of a U.S. “pivot” to Asia, has emerged as a key indicator of Washington’s commitment to the region under U.S. President Donald Trump and his willingness to counter Chinese influence in a region where tensions have spiked amid disputes over the South China Sea.

China claims most of the South China Sea, an important trade route that is also believed to contain large quantities of oil and natural gas, and has been building artificial islands on reefs, some with ports and air strips.

In a move likely to irk Beijing, the U.S. Marines will train with personnel from Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, some of which also have claims in the South China Sea.

“China will monitor whatever the U.S. does and it would prefer that the United States not work with the Asian countries included in these exercises,” said Euan Graham, director of the international security program at Australian think tank the Lowy Institute.

“Beijing would like to deal one-on-one with Southeast Asia nations that have counter claims,” he said.

The U.S. Marines will also bring additional military equipment, including helicopters and F-18 jets, Payne said.

The military deployment also threatens to further weaken Australia-Chinese relations.

Australia, a staunch U.S. ally with no claim to the South China Sea, has long maintained its neutrality in the dispute to protect its economic relationship with China.

But bilateral relations have soured in recent months after Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said China was improperly interfering in Canberra’s affairs, an accusation that triggered a rare protest from Beijing.

(Reporting by Colin Packham; Editing by Paul Tait)

South Korea’s Moon says three-way summit with North Korea, U.S. possible

FILE PHOTO: South Korean President Moon Jae-in delivers a speech during a ceremony celebrating the 99th anniversary of the March First Independence Movement against Japanese colonial rule, at Seodaemun Prison History Hall in Seoul, South Korea, March 1, 2018. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

By Hyonhee Shin and Christine Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korean President Moon Jae-in said on Wednesday a three-way summit with North Korea and the United States is possible and that talks should aim for an end to the nuclear threat on the Korean peninsula.

Moon is planning a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un next month after a flurry of diplomatic activity in Asia, Europe and the United States. U.S. President Donald Trump has also said he would meet Kim by the end of May.

“A North Korea-U.S. summit would be a historic event in itself following an inter-Korean summit,” Moon said at the presidential Blue House in Seoul after a preparatory meeting for the inter-Korean summit.

“Depending on the location, it could be even more dramatic. And depending on progress, it may lead to a three-way summit between the South, North and the United States,” he said.

Seoul officials are considering the border truce village of Panmunjom, where Moon and Kim are set for a one-day meeting, as the venue for talks between not only Kim and Moon but also a possible three-way meeting.

A Blue House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Moon did not specifically refer to Panmunjom or that a three-way summit had been discussed with Washington before the president spoke.

The rush of recent diplomatic contacts began in the lead-up to the Winter Olympics in South Korea last month and helped ease tensions on the Korean peninsula caused by North Korea’s pursuit of its nuclear and missile programs in defiance of United Nations Security Council sanctions.

South Korea wants to hold high-level talks with North Korea on March 29 to discuss a date and agenda for the inter-Korean summit and make a formal request to the North on Thursday, Moon’s presidential office said.

North and South Korean officials should be able to agree on when the summit between Moon and Kim will take place once the officials from both sides meet this month, the Blue House official said.

‘CLEAR GOAL’

Moon said the series of summits should aim for a “complete end” to the nuclear and peace issues on the Korean peninsula.

He said he has a “clear goal and vision”, which is for the establishment of a lasting peace to replace the ceasefire signed at the end of the 1950-53 Korean war. It also includes the normalization of North Korea-U.S. relations, the development of inter-Korean ties, and economic cooperation involving Pyongyang and Washington, he said.

However, the United States must also add its guarantee in order for peace to come about, Moon said.

“Whether the two Koreas live together or separately, we have to make it in a way that they prosper together and in peace, without interfering or causing damage to each other,” Moon said.

The Blue House official said this could mean stopping propaganda broadcasts at the border that are commonly blasted from both sides over loudspeakers. The official could not say whether “interference” also referred to criticism over widely recognized human rights violations in North Korea.

South Korea and the United States will resume joint military drills next month, although the exercises are expected to overlap with the summit between the two Koreas.

Seoul and Washington delayed the annual drills until after the Winter Olympics, helping to foster conditions for a restart of such talks.

North Korea regularly denounces the drills as preparation for war but a South Korean special envoy has said Kim understood that the allies must continue their “routine” exercises. That exchange has not been confirmed.

The North’s official KCNA news agency said on Wednesday a “dramatic atmosphere for reconciliation” had been created in cross-border ties and there had also been a sign of change in North Korea-U.S. relations.

That was “thanks to the proactive measure and peace-loving proposal” made by Pyongyang, not Trump’s campaign to put maximum pressure on the country, KCNA said in a commentary.

The Blue House official also said earlier on Wednesday South Korea was in discussions with China and Japan for a three-way summit in Tokyo in early May. The three countries have not held such a meeting since November 2015, with relations soured by historical and territorial tensions.

(Reporting by Hyonhee Shin and Christine Kim; Editing by Paul Tait)

Japan, South Korea urge China to do more to halt North Korea’s weapons programs

By Kiyoshi Takenaka

TOKYO (Reuters) – U.S. allies Japan and South Korea urged China to do more to get North Korea to end its nuclear and missile programmes, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono said on Tuesday amid a tense standoff between North Korea and the United States.

Reclusive North Korea has boasted of developing a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and reaching the mainland United States in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions and international condemnation, including from its lone major ally, China.

“We agreed that it is necessary to ask China to play even more of a role,” Kono said after talks with South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha.

Kono said China was implementing Security Council resolutions on North Korea but said it could do more, including adding “pressure” on Pyongyang.

North Korea has regularly threatened to destroy the United States, Japan and South Korea and has fired missiles over Japan in recent tests. China routinely says it is meeting its Security Council obligations on North Korea and urges “all sides” in the dispute to pursue dialogue.

The United States has also pressured China and other nations to cut trade and diplomatic ties with North Korea as part of international efforts to dry up Pyongyang’s illegal cash flows that could fund its weapons programmes.

The U.S. Navy’s top officer said on Tuesday said that vessels from eastern Pacific could be brought forward to reinforce U.S. naval power in Asia as Washington contends with increased threats in the region.

North Korea has defended its weapons programmes as necessary to counter U.S. aggression and sees the military drills the United States holds with South Korea and Japan as preludes to invasion. The United States stations 28,500 troops in the South, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War.

China and Russia have proposed that the United States and South Korea stop major military exercises in exchange for North Korea halting its weapons programmes.

U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have exchanged bellicose rhetoric in recent weeks, with Trump threatening to destroy North Korea if provoked, while U.S. diplomats have stressed the importance of diplomacy.

Trump on Monday unveiled a new national security strategy, again saying Washington had to deal with the challenge posed by North Korea.

Japan and South Korea are seeking to boost cooperation over North Korea, despite lingering tension between them over the issue of “comfort women”, a Japanese euphemism for women – many of them Korean – forced to work in Japanese military brothels before and during World War Two.

Researchers say a series of recent cyber attacks has netted North Korean hackers millions of dollars in virtual currencies like bitcoin, with more attacks expected as international sanctions drive the country to seek new sources of cash.

North Korea’s government-backed hackers have been blamed for a rising number of cyber attacks, including the so-called WannaCry cyber attack that crippled hospitals, banks and other companies across the globe this year.

(Additional reporting by Josh Smith in Seoul and Jeremy Wagstaff in Singapore; Writing by Linda Sieg and Nick Macfie)

Trump meets Japan, Australia leaders over trade, North Korea threat

U.S. President Donald Trump holds a trilateral meeting with Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull alongside the ASEAN Summit in Manila, Philippines November 13, 2017.

MANILA (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump raised North Korea’s missile tests during talks on Monday with the prime ministers of Japan and Australia, and said “a lot” of progress had been made in negotiations on trade.

On the sidelines of a summit of East and Southeast Asian leaders in Manila, Trump met with Japan’s Shinzo Abe and Australia’s Malcolm Turnbull, and said discussions at the meeting would include tensions on the Korean Peninsula and trade.

In brief remarks prior to news media being ushered out of the meeting, Turnbull said North Korea’s “recklessness” needed to be stopped, while Abe said the most immediate challenge was to ensure regional peace and stability.

Following the meeting, the White House said “the three leaders reaffirmed their commitment to maintaining maximum pressure on North Korea in the effort to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.”

“They also discussed expanded security cooperation for enhanced deterrence and defense against North Korean aggression,” the White House said in a statement.

The three men also discussed the need for “free and open” trade in the Indo-Pacific region and “the need to pursue fair and reciprocal trade,” the White House added.

Trump, who campaigned heavily on U.S. trade issues, made pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Asian trade deal one of his first acts in office. His administration has instead pledged to reach bilateral pacts with individual nations.

Countries remaining in the pact have said the deal is advancing without the United States.

(Reporting by Steve Holland; Writing by Martin Petty and Susan HeaveyEditing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Jonathan Oatis)

Vietnam’s neighbors, ASEAN, targeted by hackers: report

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – A hacking group previously linked to the Vietnamese government or working on its behalf has broken into the computers of neighboring countries as well as a grouping of Southeast Asian nations, according to cybersecurity company Volexity.

Steven Adair, founder and CEO, said the hacking group was still active, and had compromised the website of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) over several high-profile summit meetings. ASEAN is holding another summit of regional leaders in the Philippines capital Manila this week.

In May, cybersecurity company FireEye reported that the group, which it calls APT32 and is also known as OceanLotus, was actively targeting foreign multinationals and dissidents in Vietnam. FireEye said at the time the group’s activity was “of interest to the nation of Vietnam.”

Adair told Reuters he had no basis to definitely say who was behind the group but said its capabilities rivalled those of most other advanced persistent threat (APT) groups, a term often used to refer to hacker groups that are believed to have state support.

“What we can say is that this is a very well resourced attacker that is able to conduct several simultaneous attack campaigns.”

Vietnamese officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. But Hanoi has in the past denied accusations of cyber-attacks against organizations or individuals, and said it would prosecute any cases.

Adair said it was not clear how much information the group had stolen. “We do not really have anything on the scale of data theft, but we can tell you the scale and reach of the sites they have compromised is very far reaching,” he said.

Volexity said in a report that the group had compromised websites of ministries or government agencies in Laos, Cambodia and the Philippines so they would load malicious code onto the computers of targeted victims.

This code would then direct them to a Google page which asked for their permission to access their Google account. If the user agrees, the hackers then have access to their contacts and emails.

The ministries included Cambodia’s ministries of foreign affairs, the environment, the civil service and social affairs, as well as its national police. In the Philippines it had compromised the websites of the armed forces and the office of the president.

Three ASEAN websites, and the websites of dozens of Vietnamese non-government groups, individuals and media, were similarly targeted. The group also infected websites belonging to several Chinese oil companies.

Officials at ASEAN’s headquarters in Jakarta were not immediately available for comment.

Kirt Chanthearith, a spokesman for the Cambodian national police, said the police website was hacked about six months ago but he did not know who was responsible. “It was hacked and we lost some data”, he said, without giving further details.

Officials in Thailand said they were not aware of any hacking of government or police websites.

In Manila, Allan Cabanlong, executive director of the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordination Centre, said there was no damage to government web sites in the Philippines but authorities were taking preventive measures.

“We’ve taken measures like cyber hygiene programs,” he told Reuters. “We are conducting due diligence in the Philippines and we are clearing our network.”

(Reporting by Jeremy Wagstaff; Additional reporting by Chansy Chhorn in PHNOM PENH, Matthew Tostevin in HANOI, Patpicha Tanakasempipat and Suphanida Thakral in BANGKOK, Agustinus Beo Da Costa in JAKARTA and Neil Jerome Morales in MANILA; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Philippines hunts for possible new Islamic State ’emir’ in South East Asia

By Manuel Mogato

MANILA (Reuters) – Philippine authorities were on the lookout on Monday for a Malaysian who could be the new leader of pro-Islamic State groups in Southeast Asia, security chiefs said, following the deaths of several high-profile regional extremists.

The army terminated combat operations in southern Marawi two weeks ago after killing what it believed were the last remnants of a rebel alliance that held parts of the lakeside city for five months.

Following the country’s biggest security crisis in decades, troops have made significant gains in the week since they killed Isnilon Hapilon, a leader of the Abu Sayyaf group and anointed “emir” of Islamic State in Southeast Asia.

His assumed deputy, Malaysian Mahmud Ahmad, was also believe killed, as was Omarkhayan Maute, a top operative in the alliance.

“We are still looking for Amin Baco,” Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said, describing the Malaysian as the likely new “successor as the emir of those terrorists”.

More than 1,100 people – mostly militants – were killed and 350,000 displaced by the Marawi unrest, a crisis that shocked predominantly Catholic Philippines and led to unease about Islamic State gaining traction in Muslim parts of the island of Mindanao.

Police chief Ronaldo dela Rosa said he received similar information that Baco, an expert bomb-maker, had assumed the role of Islamic State’s point man.

Experts say Baco was trained under Malaysian militant Zulkifli bin Hir, alias Marwan, who was killed in 2015 in a clash in marshlands in Maguindanao province that left 44 police commandoes dead.

The information that Baco could be in charge came from an Indonesian arrested in Marawi last week, dela Rosa said.

Despite declaring the end of operations, troops are still fighting some hold-outs hiding amid the ruins of a city battered by months of air strikes. Troops have since killed nine gunmen in Marawi, Colonel Romeo Brawner said on Monday, emphasizing why residents were being kept out of the pulverized battle zone.

Baco was reported to have been killed in Marawi but intelligence sources said he had fled.

“He could be somewhere on Jolo island or in nearby Maguindanao,” an army colonel familiar with Islamist militant groups in Mindanao, told Reuters.

He said Baco had been in the Philippines for a long time and had links with regional extremist group Jemaah Islamiah. He was married to a daughter of a local militant sub-leader.

As early as 2011, he was facilitating movements into the Philippines of funds, arms and fighters from Indonesia and Malaysia, but his links to the Islamic State network were not known to be strong, another military intelligence official said.

He said Baco was in a position to take over because of his familiarity with extremists from various groups in Mindanao.

(Writing by Neil Jerome Morales and Manuel Mogato; Editing by Martin Petty and Michael Perry)

Southeast Asian ministers urge North Korea to rein in weapons programs

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un looks on during a visit to the Chemical Material Institute of the Academy of Defense Science in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang on August 23, 2017. KCNA/via REUTERS

By Manuel Mogato

CLARK FREEPORT ZONE, Philippines (Reuters) – Southeast Asian defense ministers on Monday expressed “grave concern” over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs and urged the reclusive country to meet its international obligations and resume communications.

North Korea is working to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of striking the U.S. mainland and has ignored all calls, even from its lone major ally, China, to rein in its weapons programs which it conducts in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

Defense ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), in a joint statement, underscored the “need to maintain peace and stability in the region” and called “for the exercise of self-restraint and the resumption of dialogue to de-escalate tensions in the Korean peninsula”.

They are due to meet with their counterparts from the United States, China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, Russia and New Zealand on Tuesday when North Korea, the disputed South China Sea and terrorism are expected to top the agenda.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has said he will talk with Asian allies about North Korea and the crisis caused by its “reckless” provocations.

Mattis’s trip to Asia, which will also include stops in Thailand and South Korea, comes just weeks before Donald Trump’s first visit to Asia as U.S. president.

In the same statement, the ministers reiterated the importance of “safety and freedom of navigation in and over-flight above the South China Sea” and called for “self restraint in the conduct of activities”.

They also vowed to work together to combat terrorism as they condemned the attack by the Maute militant group in the southern Philippine city of Marawi.

The Philippines on Monday announced the end of five months of military operations in Marawi after a fierce and unfamiliar urban war that marked the country’s biggest security crisis in years.

(Writing by Karen Lema; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Trump to visit Asia in November, North Korea in spotlight

U.S. President Donald Trump departs aboard Air Force One to return to Washington from Indianapolis International Airport in Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S. September 27, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Donald Trump will travel to Asia in November for the first time since becoming president, stopping in Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines on a trip expected to be dominated by the North Korea nuclear threat.

Joined by his wife Melania, Trump will travel Nov. 3-14. His visit will include attending two major summits, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Vietnam and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations conclave in the Philippines.

Trump’s attendance at the Manila summit had been in doubt until recent days, with officials saying he was reluctant to show support for Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who has been responsible for a number of anti-American outbursts.

A U.S. official said Asian leaders who met Trump at the United Nations General Assembly in New York last week helped persuade him to attend in unity with key Asian allies.

An Asian diplomat welcomed Trump’s decision to visit Manila “because that reassures the region that Asia policy is not just about North Korea, it’s about Southeast Asia as well.”

The diplomat said Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal early this year had raised questions about the administration’s commitment to the region. But visits by senior officials, including the secretaries of state, defense and commerce, and Trump’s planned trip, showed Washington intended to remain engaged.

Philippine Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano said Duterte was looking forward to meeting Trump, adding that the relationship between the two countries was so resilient that ties would always recover, regardless of disagreements.

Trump, who has been locked in an increasingly bitter war of words with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, will have the opportunity to bolster allied resolve for what he calls the “complete denuclearization” of Pyongyang.

He has denounced Kim as a “rocket man” on a suicide mission for test launches of ballistic missiles and for nuclear weapon tests. He has warned North Korea would face total devastation if it threatens the United States. Kim has blasted Trump as “mentally deranged.”

“The president’s engagements will strengthen the international resolve to confront the North Korean threat and ensure the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” the White House said in announcing the trip.

Trump’s visit to China will reciprocate a trip to the United States made in April by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump has applied heavy pressure on China to rein in North Korea. While his efforts have had limited success thus far, he went out of his way to thank Xi on Tuesday for his efforts.

“I applaud China for breaking off all banking relationships with North Korea – something that people would have thought unthinkable even two months ago. I want to thank President Xi,” Trump said at a news conference with Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

Speaking in Beijing, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told China’s top diplomat State Councilor Yang Jiechi that the two presidents had established a “very regular and close working relationship”.

Yang described Trump’s visit as of great importance to the bilateral relationship. “Let us concentrate on cooperation and properly manage our differences in a spirit of mutual respect and mutual benefit,” he said to Tillerson.

At the same time, Trump’s national security team is conducting a broad review of U.S. strategy toward China in search of ways to counter Chinese trade practices and open up market access, a senior administration official said.

The United States also considers Chinese entities behind the theft of intellectual property and cyber attacks and wants to find ways to address these concerns, the official said.

There was no definite timetable for concluding the review.

“We’re looking at all of it,” the official said.

(Reporting by Steve Holland, additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in WASHINGTON, Phil Stewart in BEIJING and Martin Petty in MANILA; Editing by Andrew Hay and Richard Pullin)

Macau struggles to recover from Typhoon Hato’s destruction

By Tyrone Siu and Farah Master

MACAU/HONG KONG (Reuters) – Chaos and confusion gripped Macau on Thursday after one of the strongest typhoons on record hit the territory, killing at least nine people, and leaving more than half the city still without water and power, and casinos relying on back-up generators.

Rescuers on Thursday searched submerged cars for trapped people in the former Portuguese territory, while overwhelmed emergency services scrambled to respond to crisis calls.

A man looks out from inside an apartment where some windows have been broken by typhoon Hato in Macau, China August 24, 2017. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

Many residents and tourists complained that the government was woefully unprepared for Typhoon Hato and its destructive winds of more than 200 kmh (124 mph).

Macau’s government broadcaster TDM said Typhoon Hato, a maximum signal 10 storm, was the strongest since 1968 to hit the world’s biggest gambling hub and home to around 600,000 people.

“The city looks like it was just in a war,” said one civil servant, who declined to be named as they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Fallen trees and debris are seen on a road following Typhoon Hato in Macau, China, August 24, 2017 in this picture obtained from social media. Karen Yung via REUTERS

Hato on Wednesday hit the nearby financial hub of Hong Kong, uprooting trees, flooding streets, forcing hundreds of airline flights to be canceled and halting financial trading. There were reports of 34 people injured in Hong Kong, which had not been hit by a signal 10 typhoon for five years.

At one stage as Hato intensified, Hong Kong posted a signal 8 storm warning, saying it was likely to go higher, yet Macau’s government rated Hato only a signal 3 typhoon.

“I am shocked with the late notice and lack of preparation that was given for this superstorm. Residents are in peril and unable to assess if help is on the way,” said Ashley Sutherland-Winch, a marketing consultant in Macau.

Exteriors of buildings, including parts of multi-billion dollar casinos, were ripped away by Hato’s powerful winds.

Video footage from Macau residents sent to Reuters showed a man struggling to keep his head above water in an enclosed carpark filled with debris, while another showed a large truck toppling over and pedestrians flung across pavements. Reuters could not independently verify the footage.

While most of Macau’s large casinos, especially those operating on the Las Vegas style Cotai strip, were trying to operate as normal, many were relying on back-up generators.

Casino stocks listed in Hong Kong fell versus a rise in the benchmark Hang Seng Index on Thursday with the full impact on gambling revenues and economic cost still unknown, analysts said.

Nolan Ledarney, director of Crafted 852, a food website in Hong Kong, who was staying inside Galaxy’s casino resort with his wife and three children said guests had been corralled into safe areas.

Supermarket staff sell goods outside a supermarket during power outages after Typhoon Hato hit in Macau, China August 24, 2017. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

Severe flooding overwhelmed Macau, which is in the process of building new infrastructure such as a light rail, to cope with a surge in visitors.

Macau has rapidly transformed from a sleepy fishing village over a decade ago into a major gambling hub, although infrastructure has mostly failed to keep pace with its development.

Transportation remained in chaos with damage to both of Macau’s ferry terminals and roads crammed with traffic. Schools, museums and public venues remained closed on Thursday.

“The government cannot handle the challenge as the people would expect from a self claimed first class city,” said Macau resident and political commentator Larry So.

Hato had been downgraded to a tropical storm on Thursday and was about 680 km (422 miles) west of Hong Kong and expected to weaken further as it moves inland over China.

(Writing by Farah Master; additional reporting by Anne Marie Roantree in Hong Kong and Andrew Galbraith in Shanghai; Editing by Michael Perry)

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