HANOI, May 23 (Xinhua) -- As of late Monday, 204 Vietnamese people on 17 fishing ships had gone missing in Typhoon Chanchu, local newspaper Young People reported Tuesday.

    Thirteen ships from central Da Nang city and the two central provinces of Quang Nam and Quang Ngai with 220 people on board sank, leaving 123 of them missing. Rescuers found 77 survivors and 20 dead bodies on the ships, the paper quoted sources from the country's National Committee on Search and Rescue.

    Three ships from Da Nang carrying 60 people and one ship from Quang Nam with 21 people on board had been defined going missing.

    Vietnam will keep on rescue works for at least 10 more days. Vietnam has yet to have full statistics of the number of ships and fishermen hit by the typhoon.

    Chanchu, which means "pearl," formed in the Pacific, about 550 km east of Mindanao island in the Philippines on May 9. It hit the central Philippines, then headed to central Vietnam, but suddenly changed its direction to southern China, killing dozens of people and affecting thousands of others from the three countries. Enditem