Typhoon Nuri weakens after hitting Chinese coast

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Typhoon Nuri, which shut down much of Hong Kong for a day, gradually weakened on Saturday after making landfall in China, though it disrupted hundreds of flights and left at least three people dead in Guangdong province.

Hong Kong, which was forced to cancel or delay hundreds of flights when Nuri made a rare direct hit on the city on Friday faced an aviation crunch early on Saturday as thousands of stranded passengers flocked to the airport.

The city's major carrier, Cathay Pacific, said in a statement it was still struggling to clear a backlog of some 18,000 passengers. It apologized for the inconvenience, saying the typhoon had placed "tremendous pressure on its resources".

However, a planeload of 18 horses which competed in Hong Kong's Olympic equestrian events that ended last Thursday, finally took off for Amsterdam after being grounded earlier.

Container ports were also hit by heavy congestion as long queues of container trucks waited to offload delayed shipments.

The typhoon was the worst to hit Hong Kong in five years, toppling scaffolding and trees. Dozens of people were injured and one man who went swimming was washed away by heavy swells.

By Saturday afternoon though, the rain had largely cleared.

In China's provincial capital of Guangzhou an expressway traffic sign crashed into a van and killed three passengers, the Xinhua news agency reported.

The force 8 to 10 winds which hit the eastern part of the province and the Pearl River Delta, disrupted hundreds of flights there and in the gambling hub of Macau.

Nuri was likely to continue ebbing and moving northwest, though torrential rains were expected in western Guangdong and the Pearl River Delta over the weekend, Xinhua added.

(Reporting by James Pomfret; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)