TUY HOA - Typhoon Lingling killed at least 16 people, injured dozens and left more than 12,000 homeless in central Vietnam on Monday after killing hundreds in the Philippines last week, officials said.

Making landfall in Vietnam early on Monday, Lingling brought winds gusting up to Force 12 on the Beaufort Scale, or 133 km (83 miles) per hour, and torrential rain to seven provinces from Quang Tri to Khanh Hoa, 500 km (312 miles) to the south.

Disaster management officials said the typhoon flattened 2,456 houses -- homes to more than 12,000 people -- and damaged 3,281 others. At least 167 docked fishing vessels were damaged or sunk.

Officials said 13 people died in Phu Yen province, two in Binh Dinh and one in Quang Ngai.

A 16-year-old boy was electrocuted in Quang Ngai after Lingling tore through power lines and a three-year-old child was killed in a collapsed house in Binh Dinh.

At total of 76 people were reported injured.

Meteorologists said the typhoon weakened to a tropical low pressure system after making landfall but torrential rain swelled some rivers to danger levels, prompting the evacuation of hundreds of families.

Officials in Binh Dinh province said thousands of trees had been uprooted and power cables cut. The winds also brought a 92-metre (299-foot) telecommunications mast crashing down into surrounding government buildings in the provincial capital Quy Nhon, cutting telephone links.

A Reuters Video News cameraman saw dozens of big trees uprooted on the north-south Highway One running through Phu Yen and in its capital Tuy Hoa, about 400 km (250 miles) northeast of Ho Chi Minh City.

Le Anh Tuan, a 40-year-old Tuy Hoa resident, said the typhoon took about three hours to pass over his house. "My wife, my children and I had to hide here. We didn't dare go out," he said.

A disaster official in Quang Ngai said about 400 families were evacuated on Sunday from low-lying areas around Tuy Hoa.

Lingling was the first typhoon to hit central Vietnam this year, although last month a tropical low pressure system brought torrential rains and floods to eight central provinces, killing at least 44 people.

Meteorologists said Lingling moved west towards northern Cambodia and southern Laos at about 15 km (10 miles) an hour.

An exporter in the coffee-growing province of Daklak in the Central Highlands bordering Cambodia said rains had disrupted the harvest but no damage to coffee trees had been reported.

The official in Quang Ngai said rains would swell rivers there to danger levels by late Monday, at which low-lying land would be submerged and dykes threatened by collapse.

A meteorologist said Lingling could bring more rain to upstream parts of the Mekong River in Cambodia and southern Laos.

He said a swelling of the Mekong River upstream could slow the receding of floodwaters downstream in the rice-growing Mekong Delta which have killed at least 366 people since August, 286 of them children, but done only slight damage to crops.

Flash floods and landslides in Vietnam's central region in October and November 1999 killed more than 730 people.

Lingling left a trail of death and destruction in the Philippines last week, with at least 270 people believed killed, including 226 who drowned or were buried under mud. Nampa-Reuters