HONG KONG, Aug 23 (Reuters) - Typhoon Nuri, which shut down much of Hong Kong for a day, was gradually weakening on Saturday after making landfall in China, though it disrupted hundreds of flights and left three people dead in Guangdong province.

Hong Kong, which was forced to cancel or delay hundreds of flights when Nuri made a rare direct hit on the city on Friday faced an aviation crunch early on Saturday as thousands of stranded passengers flocked to the airport.

One passenger interviewed on Hong Kong's Cable television said the situation was "very disorganised" though the backlog of flights was slowly beginning to clear.

The city's major carriers Cathay Pacific and Dragon Air had cancelled most of their flights yesterday.

The typhoon was the most severe to hit Hong Kong in five years, toppling scaffolding and trees.

Dozens of people were injured and one man who went swimming was washed away by heavy swells.

The typhoon has now been downgraded to a weak tropical depression.

In China's provincial capital of Guangzhou an expressway traffic sign toppled, crushing a van and killing three passengers, the Xinhua news agency reported.

The force 8 to 10 winds which hit the eastern part of the province and the Pearl River Delta, disrupted hundreds of flights there and in the gambling hub of Macau.

Nuri was likely to continue ebbing and moving northwestward, though torrential rains were expected in western Guangdong and the Pearl River Delta over the weekend, Xinhua added.

(Reporting by James Pomfret; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

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