Vietnam's Typhoon Yagi death toll passes 250, scores still missing

By Khanh Vu

HANOI (Reuters) - The death toll in Vietnam from typhoon Yagi and the landslides and flash floods it triggered rose to 254 on Friday, authorities said, as flood waters receded and search efforts pressed on.

The Southeast Asian country is still reeling from the strongest storm to hit Asia this year which made landfall on its northeastern coast on Saturday.

More than 820 people have been injured and 82 are still missing, according to the state disaster management agency.

Authorities were still searching for 41 people who have not been seen since a flash flood swept away all 37 homes in Nu Village in the northern mountainous province of Lao Cai early on Tuesday, the provincial government said.

Forty-six of its inhabitants have been confirmed killed.

At another village in Lao Cai, 115 people previously listed as missing returned safely after taking shelter on a mountain for two days without power and telecoms, the disaster management agency said.

They made tents out of bamboo and tarpaulins after seeing that their village was threatened by landslides, the agency added.

"We could only bring some rice and food with us, and when we ran out of food, we would forage for wild bamboo shoots to eat," village chief Vang Seo Chu told the agency.

Hundreds of thousands of children have lost their homes and are lacking access to clean water, sanitation and healthcare, the U.N. children's agency UNICEF said.

About 2 million children have been left without access to education, psychosocial support and school feeding programmes as schools have been damaged and hit by power and water shortages, it added.

"The actual number of schools and students affected across the worst-affected provinces is expected to be much higher," it said.

UNICEF estimates that an initial $15 million is needed to address critical needs of affected children and families.

In Hanoi, flood waters on the Red River continued to subside and traffic was allowed back onto some bridges, the government said.

Insurance companies in Vietnam had received 7 trillion dong ($285.36 million) of claims as of Thursday for damages done by the typhoons, floods and landslides, the finance ministry said.

($1 = 24,530 dong)

(Reporting by Khanh Vu; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Andrew Heavens)