SHANGHAI - Seven people were confirmed dead and three were missing as tropical storm Wipha tore across China, narrowly missing the nation's financial capital Shanghai, state media said on Thursday. Five were killed after their car veered off the road amid slippery conditions and plunged into a river in east China's Zhejiang province, Xinhua news agency reported.

One other victim was crushed to death when his house collapsed, also in Zhejiang, while in Shanghai a man was reported electrocuted in water electrically charged by a lightbox, other state media said.

Shanghai, a city of 17 million, had been braced for major havoc, closing schools and cancelling some sports events, but it had, so far, avoided major destruction.

As of early Thursday, Wipha had left the Chinese mainland via the eastern province of Jiangsu and returned to the ocean, according to the Shanghai Meteorology Bureau.

"The storm was in Yanwei port of Jiangsu this morning at 6 am (2200 GMT Wednesday)," said Fu Yi, a meteorologist at the bureau.

"It's now moving very fast to the northeast and has entered the Yellow Sea Region," he said.

Forecasts suggested the storm might now be headed for North Korea.

Wipha had originally been preceded by warnings that it had the potential to become the worst typhoon in a decade, but it rapidly lost strength after making landfall in China on Wednesday, and was downgraded to a tropical storm.

Even so, it triggered one of the largest evacuation operations in China since the communist takeover in 1949, with 2.6 million people being relocated in the most heavily affected eastern provinces. (CNA/AFP/PAB)