President Xi Jinping called for an “all-out rescue effort,” according to CCTV, the state broadcaster, and the authorities said that hundreds of rescuers had been sent to Yancheng to sort through the wreckage. Nearly half of the injured were in serious condition, the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs said late Thursday.

The tornado, which began around 2:30 p.m. and was accompanied by hailstorms, destroyed thousands of homes and stores, as well as several manufacturing plants and rice mills, according to news reports. Yancheng is known as a center of textile production and farming in Jiangsu Province.

A man who gave his last name as Zhang told China News Service that he had been driving along a street when he noticed that trees were falling in a “strange way.” He pulled over, and soon the winds lifted his car and threw it into a river.

Tornadoes are relatively common in Jiangsu Province, in China’s southeast, with more than 1,000 recorded over the past six decades, according to Chinese news reports. Southern China has faced several bouts of extreme weather recently, with floods killing more than 20 people this week.