Three people were killed and 40 fishermen including 22 Vietnamese went missing after typhoon Neoguri hit south China on the weekend, national media said on Monday.

Two of the victims, an 80-year-old woman and an 11-year-old girl, died in a mudslide in Shenzhen on Sunday, and the third was killed in Zhuhai by an aluminum sheet that was blown off a roof by high winds, Xinhua news agency reported.

More than 1.3 million people have been affected on Hainan Island, a popular tourist resort. Some 213,000 of these have been evacuated, and 550 houses have been destroyed. Local authorities have estimated the damage at $48 million.

Neoguri, the earliest typhoon to hit China in more than half a century, slammed into the south of the country with heavy rains and strong winds on Friday, and then weakened to become a tropical storm.

The first typhoon in China usually comes in late June.