At least 2,000 passengers were stranded and at least eight trains were held at two stations in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region as hurricane-force winds of up to 170 kilometers per hour swept the region on Tuesday and Wednesday.

"We'll wait until the wind trails off and visibility improves,"said a spokesman at the railway station in the provincial capital,Urumqi.

The Urumqi railway station has canceled four trains, including one to Xi'an in the northwestern Shaanxi Province and three to other parts of the region amid fears that trains might be derailed in high winds in Gobi desert.

This has posed a problem for many holidaymakers who are eager to get back to work after the May Day holiday in the first week of May.

The railway station in Hami, a city in eastern Xinjiang, has also delayed four trains bound for Urumqi.

High winds have been sweeping Hami for five days. The local meteorological station said winds gusted 170 kilometers per hour Tuesday night and would probably ease off Wednesday night or earlyon Thursday.

Railway authorities in Urumqi refused to comment.

The local civil affairs department said no deaths or injuries had been reported as yet because the affected areas are sparsely populated and have few communication links.

In the cities the weather has been less disastrous, but Urumqi suffered heavy rains on Wednesday.

On Tuesday night, the temperature in the southern suburbs of Urumqi dropped to minus two degrees Celsius, compared with 15 degrees over the weekend. The winds measured 38 kilometers per hour.

Hurricane-force winds derailed 11 carriages of a train in Xinjiang on Feb. 28, killing three passengers and injuring 34 others.

Editor: Donald