Scores of more deaths reported as floods cause havoc across China

Jul 22, 2007, 9:23 GMT

Beijing - The death toll has risen to at least 160 from floods an landslides in many areas of China over the past week, with dozens still missing and several major rivers swelling again, state media said on Sunday.

Many of the latest casualties were reported in the mountainous southwestern region of Yunnan, where 59 died and eight were missing, the official Xinhua news agency said.

A landslide killed four people and injured three others on Saturday as they were clearing debris from an earlier landslide in a mining village in Yunnan's Tengchong county, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Another landslide caused by torrential rain killed at least 27 people in Tengchong on Thursday when it engulfed three tents used by migrant workers.

Floods and landslides since Wednesday had affected about 386,000 people, destroyed 4,000 homes and forced the evacuation of more than 6,500 in Yunnan by Saturday, local officials told the agency.

In the eastern province of Shandong, the death toll from floods had risen to at least 40 people, with nine still missing, the provincial civil affairs office said.

About 180 millimetres of rain was recorded in just three hours on Wednesday evening in the provincial capital, Jinan, forcing the evacuation of 112,600 people in Shandong.

The rainstorm was the worst since 1916 when Jinan began to collect hydrological data, the agency said.

At least 34 people died in Jinan, most of them crushed by collpasing buildings, drowned in submerged vehicles or electrocuted, it said.

The city's poor drainage system made it more vulnerable to flooding, Li Guang, the vice director of the Shandong flood control office, told the agency.

The death toll in the adjoining south-western regions of Chongqing and Sichuan had also risen to 49 by Friday, with at least 12 missing, after the worst rainstorms for more than 115 years.

More than 290,000 people were evacuated in Chongqing.

At least two more people died and two were missing in western areas of Hubei province in central China.

Meanwhile, about 182,000 people were working to repair dikes to prevent flooding along the Huaihe river in the eastern province of Anhui.

The middle and lower reaches of the Huaihe face a 'severe flood-control challenge' for at least 10 more days, the agency said.

About 67,000 people in Anhui were evacuated from villages along the Huaihe on Thursday, as experts warned of the possibility of the worst flooding since 1954, reports said.

More than 1 million people were evacuated along the Huaihe this month in the three provinces of Henan, Anhui and Jiangsu.

Torrential rain and serious flooding have affected many other areas of central, southern and north-western China this month.

Summer floods and landslides have killed about 700 people in China so far this summer, according to state media and civil affairs ministry reports.

Lightning has also killed 282 people across China this year, the ministry said.