3 Killed as Typhoon Hato Lashes Hong Kong

Three people were killed as typhoon Hato barreled into Hong Kong. (AFP)
Three people were killed as typhoon Hato barreled into Hong Kong. (AFP)
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3 Killed as Typhoon Hato Lashes Hong Kong

Three people were killed as typhoon Hato barreled into Hong Kong. (AFP)
Three people were killed as typhoon Hato barreled into Hong Kong. (AFP)

Three people were killed on Wednesday and 34 injured as Typhoon Hato, a maximum category 10 stormed, battered Hong Kong with wind and rain that forced a majority of businesses to close.

Three men aged 30 to 65 died, the Macau government said, while two people were missing. One of the men died after being injured by a wall that blew down, another fell from a fourth floor terrace and the last was a Chinese tourist hit by a truck.

Financial markets were suspended and schools were closed as Hato bore down, the first category 10 storm to hit the city since 2012.

Many skyscrapers in the usually teeming streets of Hong Kong were empty and dark as office workers stayed at home.

Hato, that means "sky pigeon" in Japanese, churned up Hong Kong's Victoria Harbor and triggered large swells and big waves on some of the city's most popular beaches, with serious flooding in low-lying areas.

"I've never seen one like this," Garrett Quigley, a longtime resident of Lantau island to the west of the city, said of the storm.

"Cars are half submerged and roads are impassable with flooding and huge trees down. It's crazy."

In residential districts such as Heng Fa Chuen on densely populated Hong Kong island, waves smashed against the sides of oceanfront buildings and surged over a promenade, sweeping away walls and benches and swamping vehicles parked nearby.

Construction cranes swayed at the tops of skyscrapers, windows imploded and nearly 200 trees were uprooted, while some people used canoes to venture out into flooded streets.

Authorities downgraded the storm to a category three by late-afternoon with government services, the courts, financial markets and companies set to resume normal business on Thursday.

The storm also caused a power blackout across most of the gambling hub of Macau for about two hours, residents said, with disruption to mobile phone and internet networks. There was severe flooding on the streets, with some cars almost completely submerged, and the water supply was affected in some districts. The three men who died included a 45-year-old Chinese tourist who was hit by a heavy truck, according to a government statement.

Brian Chan, 31, said authorities had failed to give enough notice of the impending storm and were not properly prepared, describing the territory as "totally lost" in the typhoon.

The storm also made landfall in China's Guangdong province, in Zhuhai city adjacent to Macau, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported.

Numerous flights and trains were canceled in Guangdong province, with Shenzhen's International Airport particularly badly hit.

Thousands of residents along the Chinese coast were evacuated and fishing vessels were called back to port.

Maximum winds near Hato's center were recorded at a destructive 155 kph (95 mph) as it continued to move west across Guangdong in the general direction of Hainan island.

A senior scientific officer for the Hong Kong observatory warned that sea levels could rise several meters in some places, with the government issuing flood alerts and opening 27 shelters across the city.

Trading in Hong Kong's financial markets was halted for the day, the stock exchange said. Typhoon Nida in August last year was the last storm to close the exchange for the whole day.

The city's flagship carrier, Cathay Pacific, and Hong Kong Airlines said the majority of their flights to and from Hong Kong between 2200 GMT Tuesday and 0900 GMT Wednesday would be canceled.

Other transport services, including ferries to Macau and outlying islands in Hong Kong, were suspended.

Hong Kong is regularly besieged by typhoons between July and October, but direct hits are rare.

The city saw its strongest storm in 1962 when the eye of typhoon Wanda passed over and gusts of 284 kilometers per hour were recorded.

It killed 130 people and destroyed thousands of residential huts, leaving 72,000 people homeless.



NATO Needs More Long-range Missiles to Deter Russia, US General Says

An explosion of a drone lights up the sky over the city during a Russian drone and missile strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine July 10, 2025. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich/File Photo
An explosion of a drone lights up the sky over the city during a Russian drone and missile strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine July 10, 2025. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich/File Photo
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NATO Needs More Long-range Missiles to Deter Russia, US General Says

An explosion of a drone lights up the sky over the city during a Russian drone and missile strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine July 10, 2025. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich/File Photo
An explosion of a drone lights up the sky over the city during a Russian drone and missile strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine July 10, 2025. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich/File Photo

NATO will need more long-range missiles in its arsenal to deter Russia from attacking Europe because Moscow is expected to increase production of long-range weapons, a US Army general told Reuters.

Russia's effective use of long-range missiles in its war in Ukraine has convinced Western military officials of their importance for destroying command posts, transportation hubs and missile launchers far behind enemy lines.

"The Russian army is bigger today than it was when they started the war in Ukraine," Major General John Rafferty said in an interview at a US military base in Wiesbaden, Germany.

"And we know that they're going to continue to invest in long-range rockets and missiles and sophisticated air defences. So more alliance capability is really, really important."

The war in Ukraine has underscored Europe's heavy dependence on the United States to provide long-range missiles, with Kyiv seeking to strengthen its air defences.

Rafferty recently completed an assignment as commander of the US Army's 56th Artillery Command in the German town of Mainz-Kastel, which is preparing for temporary deployments of long-range US missiles on European soil from 2026.

At a meeting with US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Monday, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius is expected to try to clarify whether such deployments, agreed between Berlin and Washington when Joe Biden was president, will go ahead now that Donald Trump is back in the White House.

The agreement foresaw the deployment of systems including Tomahawk missiles with a range of 1,800 km and the developmental hypersonic weapon Dark Eagle with a range of around 3,000 km.

Russia has criticised the planned deployment of longer-range US missiles in Germany as a serious threat to its national security. It has dismissed NATO concerns that it could attack an alliance member and cited concerns about NATO expansion as one of its reasons for invading Ukraine in 2022.

EUROPEAN PLANS

Fabian Hoffmann, a doctoral research fellow at Oslo University who specialises in missiles, estimated that the US provides some 90% of NATO's long-range missile capabilities.

"Long-range strike capabilities are crucial in modern warfare," he said. "You really, really don't want to be caught in a position like Ukraine (without such weapons) in the first year (of the war). That puts you at an immediate disadvantage."

Aware of this vulnerability, European countries in NATO have agreed to increase defence spending under pressure from Trump.

Some European countries have their own long-range missiles but their number and range are limited. US missiles can strike targets at a distance of several thousand km.

Europe's air-launched cruise missiles, such as the British Storm Shadow, the French Scalp and the German Taurus, have a range of several hundred km. France's sea-launched Missile de Croisiere Naval (MdCN) can travel more than 1,000 km.

They are all built by European arms maker MBDA which has branches in Britain, France, Germany and Italy.

France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Britain and Sweden are now participating in a programme to acquire long-range, ground-launched conventional missiles known as the European Long-Range Strike Approach (ELSA).

As part of the program, Britain and Germany announced in mid-May that they would start work on the development of a missile with a range of over 2,000 km.