Kammuri, the ninth tropical storm of the year, was poised for another landfall in southwest China's Guangxi on Thursday evening, after lashing across neighboring Guangdong Province and the Beibu Gulf, according to the local observatory.

The observatory in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region forecast the storm would make a landfall in the western part of the region or the north part of Vietnam, which shares a border with Guangxi, at around 7:00 PM.

The eye of the storm was monitored in the Beibu Gulf, 80 km offshore from Beihai City, Guangxi as of Thursday morning.

The observatory forecast force-8 winds and downpour in cities along the Beibu Gulf.

Kammuri produced heavy rainfall on the Leizhou Peninsula to the southwest of Guangdong, after an evening landfall from Xitou Town, Yangxi County in the province on Wednesday.

Rainfall records from some hydrological stations in the region Wednesday night suggested the highest level in local history for a century.

No official sources were available on reports of human casualties.

Yangjiang City, where the storm made the landfall, had taken disaster-control measures ahead of the storm. More than 24,600 people working offshore were called back to harbor, and authorities evacuated 7,274 residents from low-lying areas.

Kammuri appeared in the northeastern part of the South China Sea and intensified into a strong tropical storm at 8:00 PM on Tuesday.

The storm was the third to hit China this season, after tropical storm Kalmaegi in early July and typhoon Fung-Wong last week.

(Xinhua News Agency August 7, 2008)