BEIJING, Apr 11 (AP) -- China's far west has been hit by the worst sandstorm in decades with one person killed and thousands stranded after sand blanketed railways and high winds smashed train and car windows, the government said Tuesday.

The storm Saturday hit many parts of far western China's Xinjiang region, with wind speeds in the popular tourist towns of Hami and Turpan reaching 183 kilometers per hour (113 mph), the official Xinhua News Agency said.

One person died and another was injured when several houses collapsed in Toksun county, Xinhua said.

Each spring, sandstorms fed by the deserts of Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia blow southeast toward Beijing and the eastern seaboard. The pale yellow dust blows out across the Pacific, clouding the skies of South Korea and occasionally drifting as far as Arizona.

Xinhua said in Turpan, 36 trains stopped service and 130 scheduled bus trips had to be canceled because of the storm -- the worst in Xinjiang since 1984.

At a toll booth along the region's 312 National Highway, some 50 cars were stranded after the storm smashed their windshields, it said. Xinhua said that the more than 200 passengers who left their cars were sheltered by local police and transport officials near the toll booth.

It was not clear whether transport lines had returned to normal by Tuesday or how many people were still stranded.

In neighboring Gansu province, which was hit by the storm on Sunday, the sand haze limited visibility in five cities to less than 100 meters (330 feet) and forced people to turn on house lights in the middle of the day in order to see, it said.