HAIKOU, June 29 (Xinhua) -- Passenger and freight liners in south China's island province of Hainan resumed service on Thursday morning, after a 24-hour suspension caused by the tropical storm Jelawat.

    The first ship with 160 passengers and 39 vehicles was allowed to set sail from Haikou, provincial capital, to Hai'an in neighboring Guangdong Province at 8 a.m. And more set off for Guangdong and Guangxi around noon, when gale on the Qiongzhou channel abated to below eight Beaufort scale.

    Two passenger trains to Guangzhou via ferry ship, scheduled at 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. and cancelled on Wednesday, will resume service, said an official with the Yuehai Railway Company.

    The tropical storm Jelawat that appeared in the South China Sea on Tuesday landed on Zhanjiang, Guangdong, at 7:40 a.m. Thursday and subsided to tropical depression, according to the Chinese Central Meteorological Station.

    However, the Office for Flood, Drought and Typhoon Relief of Hainan advised fishermen to keep close watch to the weather forecast. The office called 19,082 ships back to port on Wednesday to avoid the storm.

    Air traffic across the Qiongzhou Strait wasn't interrupted, said Li Jianguo, spokesman with the Meilan International Airport in Haikou, where 126 flights with 13,000 passengers were due to take off or land Wednesday.

    Seven flights with over 1,000 passengers, whose landing was hindered by strong wind in Haikou Wednesday and were diverted to Sanya, returned to the Meilan International Airport. Enditem