Christian Message Boards: China floods kill over 500 and keep rising

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Posted by Kindgo (Member # 2) on :

Wednesday June 26, 07:40 AM

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/020626/80/d1ypw.html

BEIJING (Reuters) - Heavy flooding in China has killed at least 543 people this month and the toll is likely to jump when the summer flood season peaks in July and August, according to Wednesday's China Daily.

Nearly 300 people were missing in just three of the hardest hit regions -- Shaanxi, Sichuan and the municipality of Chongqing -- an aid group said on Tuesday. The number nationwide was unknown.

Accounts varied as to how many people were affected by floods that threaten to rival the deluges of 1998, which killed more than 4,000 people. It was not clear if the government figure counted any of the missing as dead.

In addition, 26 miners in the northern province of Hebei were killed when flash floods swamped at least two coal mines, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday. Sixteen people were still trapped in one mine, it said.

Despite the high death toll, experts have said flooding so far this year was not bad as when the worst floods in half a century ravaged the country four years ago.

Torrential rains have hammered several of China's 19 provinces and regions, swamping some five million hectares of farmland and affecting 70 million people, the China Daily said.

Material damage from the deluges had risen to 20 billion yuan (1.5 billion pounds), it said.

Weather forecasts on Wednesday predicted steady rainfall across most of the country in the coming days, including many of the waterlogged areas already reeling after weeks of rain.

In China's financial hub Shanghai, the Huangpu and Suzhou rivers swelled above official safety levels, triggering a citywide alert and putting flood-control teams on standby, an anti-flood official said.

Flood teams had shut floodgates to keep water out of the central districts, the official said.

The Shanghai Daily estimated that some 40,000 local households would suffer from this year's rainy season, especially in the older western part of the city.