GENEVA, Jan 22: More than 90 per cent of the 235,816 people killed worldwide in natural disasters last year succumbed during the cyclone in Myanmar or the earthquake in China’s Sichuan province, the UN said on Thursday.

The annual figures released by a United Nations think tank on disaster reduction showed that the global death toll from natural disasters last year was three times more than the average of the previous seven years.

It just fell short of the global toll of more than 241,000 recorded in 2004 after the Asian tsunami killed more than 220,000 in one of the worst natural disasters ever recorded.

The economic cost of disasters last year reached $181 billion, the second largest annual tally on record since 2000.

Cyclone Nargis killed 138,366 when it struck Myanmar’s coastline eight months ago, while 84,476 people died in the earthquake that devastated a large area of southwest China in May, according to the United Nations.—AFP