August 17, 2002	Saturday	Jamadi-us-Saani 7, 1423

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BEIJING, Aug 16: About 200 people are feared dead in floods and landslides around China in recent days as the country continues to be battered by brutally destructive summer rains.

Among the dead are at least 28 people buried alive as they slept when homes were destroyed by a landslide in the southwestern province of Yunnan. A further 35 people are missing, officials said.

Also, at least 108 are known to have died in floods which inundated vast swathes of the central province of Hunan last week, caused by rain described as the heaviest to hit the region in years.

Around 1,000 people have died in floods around China this year, a figure based on official statistics and subsequent reports.

The vast majority were killed during the summer as torrential rain struck a series of regions around the country, triggering landslides and swelling rivers above danger levels.

In Hunan, around 38 million people have now been affected by flooding, an official said.

It is feared the death toll of 108 could rise still further, with more heavy rain forecast for the weekend, according to the meteorological office in Beijing.

Hunan’s government has called in the army to help evacuate flood victims and rebuild roads washed away by the torrents, the state Xinhua news agency said.

In the eastern province of Jiangxi, some 520,000 people in 10 counties were affected by flooding caused by torrential rain which have been battering the province since last Monday, creating economic losses of 180 million yuan (22 million US dollars).

Some residents’ homes are submerged in two metres of water.

The water levels in the middle and upper reaches of the province’s Gang River and its three tributaries have surpassed warning levels, threatening more floods.

Jiangxi’s flood control office has issued a notice to local officials to step up surveillance and be on the look out for landslides caused by overflows in reservoirs and torrential rain.

The Yunnan landslide, a torrent of mud and rocks caused by heavy rains, swept through villages in Xinping county on Wednesday, an official from the anti-flood office in nearby Yuxi city said.

Twenty-eight bodies had been found, with another 35 people missing and 23 injured, 11 of them seriously, said the official. A total of 611 homes were destroyed in the deluge, he said.

“The people who died were crushed underneath their houses as they collapsed. It was a massive landslide,” he said.

Emergency teams have been sent from the provincial capital of Kunming, about 100 kilometres to the north, to search for the missing.

Locals have been placed on alert for further landslides as the region is set to be pounded still further by heavy rain, local meteorologists said.

The landslide caused millions of dollars of damage, including the destruction of tobacco plants which form the livelihood of people in the area, home to the Yi and Dai ethnic minorities.

Adding still further to the death toll, officials have announced that 16 people are now known to have died in an earlier landslide in Yunnan following the discovery of 14 more bodies.

Rescue workers were continuing to search for others still missing and believed buried in the large pile of mud and rocks which slid down a hillside on Monday evening, burying seven households in a small village in Yanjin county as well as some workers repairing a nearby road.

A total of 33 people are feared buried by the landslide, a local official said.

National anti-flood officials have expressed fears that this summer’s flooding could prove even worse than that of 1998, when China experienced some of the most severe floods in its recent history, killing about 4,000 people. —AFP