HANOI, Aug. 12 (Xinhua) -- Three members of a family in Vietnam's northern Yen Bai province were struck to death by lightning, Vietnam News Agency reported on Monday.
The victims included a 57-year-old woman, her 25-year-old daughter-in-law and her four-month-old grandson. The two women were working on an upland field in Tram Tau district and using an umbrella to avoid rain for the trio when the lightning struck.
In the first seven months of this year, natural disasters in Vietnam left 34 people dead or missing, destroyed 156 houses, damaged over 3,000 other houses and 3,700 hectares of rice and other crops, causing economic losses of 239 billion Vietnamese dong (10.4 million U.S. dollars), according to the country's general statistics office.
Vietnam is one of the countries most affected by natural disasters and climate change, according to the United Nations Development Program. It faces six or seven typhoons every year on average.
