Chinese people and a lawyers' group protest at the Tokyo High Court yesterday after the court rejected their demand for compensation for injuries and deaths caused by germ warfare in the 1940s during the Japanese aggression on China. -Xinhua

Mainland emergency authorities evacuated more than 600,000 people along the southeastern coast yesterday and ordered thousands of boats into harbor as they braced for the arrival of typhoon Haitang, which killed one person and injured at least 25 as it battered Taiwan.

The storm's high winds and torrential rain left more than 1 million homes on the island without electricity and forced the closure of schools, government offices and financial markets.

Wind gusts topped 230 kilometers an hour, according to reports from Taipei.

Most of the injured were hurt by falling trees, billboards and broken glass, authorities said. Some were motorcyclists who were hurt when they were knocked off their bikes by the gusting wind.

Details were not available on the reported death.

The onslaught of heavy rain caused considerable damage to crops in Taiwan's Kaohsiung County, where losses were estimated at 100 million new Taiwan dollars (US$3.14 million).

More than 160 flights were canceled at Taiwan's airports yesterday, affecting the plans of some 12,000 travelers. Railway transportation was shut down throughout the island on Sunday night.

Hundreds were evacuated from several remote mountainous villages in Hsinchu County where dozens of people were buried alive by landslides last year.

The eye of the typhoon landed at Tungao, Ilan County, in northeastern Taiwan at 2:50pm yesterday.

The typhoon, described as the biggest to hit the island in five years and the first so far this year, spent seven hours off Hualien, on the eastern part of the island, where it made a counter-clockwise 360-degree turn before resuming its track in a west-northwesterly direction.

According to a local weather report, the storm's intensity fell to medium-typhoon range by late afternoon, with its radius shrinking from 240 kilometers to 200.

Last night forecasters said Haitang - named after a Chinese flower - was moving toward the coast of the mainland's Fujian Province.

The provincial meteorological station in Fujian, directly across the strait from Taiwan, predicted that Haitang would hit the coast between the cities of Quanzhou and Ningde early this morning or by noon at the latest.

The weather station said gale winds began sweeping the coastal areas of northern and central Fujian yesterday morning.

The station warned that heavy rains and high winds would affect most of the province through tomorrow.

Fujian began relocations on Saturday. About 316,000 fishermen and others who work on the sea were evacuated along with 223,000 residents of low-lying areas.

Fujian authorities also called more than 17,000 fishing boats and cargo ships into harbor.

The provincial government mobilized 5,000 armed police to prepare for disaster relief and rescue operations.

At Changle Airport in Fuzhou, Fujian's provincial capital, all flights were canceled or transferred to Xiamen and Shanghai.

Jinjiang Airport in Quanzhou also canceled all flights.

As the storm approached the strait, 19 flights from Hong Kong to Taiwan were canceled yesterday and another 25 flights were expected to be delayed, according to reports from Hong Kong. Twenty-four flights from Taiwan to Hong Kong were also to be canceled.

In Shanghai's neighboring Zhejiang Province, the government relocated more than 120,000 people.

Wenzhou, a Zhejiang coastal city, evacuated 77,000 people yesterday morning.