Damage to houses in northest London, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2006 is seen in this image made from television. A storm described by residents as a tornado ripped off part of a wall on a house in northwest London, damaged several homes and injured at least six people.

Tornado hits London; at least six injured, homes damaged

LONDON — A tornado ripped off part of a wall of a house in northwest London, damaged several nearby homes and injured at least six people Thursday, authorities said.

One man was taken to a hospital with a head injury, and five other adults were treated at the scene for minor injuries and shock, London Ambulance Service said.

"It came from nowhere: The sky turned dark, hail started falling and then within 10 minutes, it was gone," said local resident Perrin Sledge.

"A police officer told me he had a report of the tornado on his radio, turned the corner and saw the wind whip a garbage can into another car. He said it was like a scene from the movie Twister," Sledge said.

London Fire Brigade reported that about a hundred properties were affected in a quarter-square-mile area.

The freak storm hit just after 11 a.m. on a day of unsettled weather as high winds, bursts of rain and occasional hail and thunder swept across southern England.

The tornado ripped whole sections of roof off some homes, tore tiles from other roofs, uprooted trees and left the street strewn with debris.

One car was buried under a pile of fallen bricks, video footage from Sky News showed.

"It was like some sort of cyclone," said Tim Klotz, a resident of the Kensal Rise neighborhood in northwest London.

"I was actually in an attic room working at my desk on the computer and there was heavy rain and sleet and then the wind just really changed.

"I looked up through a skylight and debris was falling through the air. I heard what seemed like large, clay dominoes falling, which I think were roof tiles," Klotz said.

"I could see a huge cloud rolling up the street, making this tremendous sound," local resident Daniel Bidgood told British Broadcasting Corp. radio.

"I went to try to take a picture of it but a shower of debris smashed all the windows of my house."

An average of 33 tornadoes are reported annually in Britain, according to the Tornado and Storm Research Organization.

One of the worst to hit Britain destroyed the church of St. Mary le Bow and 600 homes in central London in 1091.

Nearly 100 Vietnamese dead or missing in typhoon

HANOI, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Nearly 100 people were killed or are missing after a typhoon hit the southern coast of Vietnam this week, damaging hundreds of thousands of flimsy homes, a government report said on Thursday.

The national flood and storm control centre said 67 people were confirmed dead and 31 were missing in the aftermath of Typhoon Durian, which killed hundreds in the Philippines after hitting the archipelago last Thursday.

Vietnam Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, who toured damaged areas of Ba Ria-Vung Tau province on Wednesday, postponed trips to Singapore and Malaysia, a government spokesman said. He said Dung would still attend a weekend summit of 10 ASEAN members plus India, Australia and New Zealand in the Philippines.

Durianwas Vietnam's ninth storm of the year and it damaged or destroyed more than 212,000 homes and sank 808 fishing vessels, Thursday's government report said.

Every year, hundreds or even thousands of people are killed in tropical storms and typhoons that batter flimsy dwellings and fishing boats or cause flooding and mudslides in the mostly rural Southeast Asian country of 84 million people.

In May, hundreds of Vietnamese fishermen were lost in a typhoon named Chanchu. In October, another typhoon, Xangsane, killed at least 70 and destroyed or submerged hundreds of thousands of homes when it struck the central coastal city of Danang, despite early warnings and preparations.