The death toll from floods that have battered central Vietnam over the last week rose to 67 as the country braced for an approaching typhoon, disaster officials said Tuesday.

Villagers remove belongings through the roof of a flooded home in the central province of Phu Yen, Vietnam, on Monday.
(Vietnam News Agency/Associated Press)

Seven more bodies were recovered Monday, said provincial disaster official Duong Van Huong. That brought the death toll from weekend flooding to 40.

Those floods were the second round to hit the area in just one week. The first round of flooding killed 27 people.

Eight people were still missing and hundreds of thousands of people were still living in flooded neighborhoods.

Authorities distributed more than 900 tonnes of rice to flood victims, but local officials said they needed 5,000 tonnes more, the Flood and Storm Control Department said in a report Tuesday.

Meanwhile, approaching tropical storm Peipah gathered strength and was upgraded to a typhoon with sustained winds of 133 km/h, the national weather forecast centre said.

The typhoon is expected to unleash heavy rains that will lash central Vietnam later this week.

Vietnam is prone to floods and storms, which kill hundreds of people each year.