BEIJING, March 21 (Xinhua) -- China's Ministry of Civil Affairs on Sunday allocated a batch of relief supplies to weather-hit people in northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

The ministry sent 8,000 cotton-padded tents and 40,000 cotton-padded quilts and overcoats to help relocate local people, whose lives were affected by a series of cold-front-triggered rain storms, snow storms, sand storms, mud-rock flows and snowmelt floods starting from late February and a new round of snowmelt floods caused by sharply rising temperatures this month.

As of Sunday, 13 people had died and two were missing due to bad or extreme weather in the region. More than 1.3 million people were affected and 184,000 of them had been relocated.

The severe weather had toppled 41,000 residences and damaged another 167,000 homes, causing a direct economic loss of 1.27 billion yuan (186 million U.S. dollars).