July 15, 2003	Tuesday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 14, 1424

BEIJING, July 14: Central China’s Hubei province on Monday braced for the largest flood crest of the year along the Yangtze River while the swollen Huai River washed away homes and destroyed lives.

As water levels along critical points on the Yangtze were expected to exceed warning lines in Hubei, home to 60 million people, flood control officials were preparing for the worst.

“We’re paying special attention to the water level in reservoirs throughout the province,” said a flood control official in the provincial capital of Wuhan.

“Seasonal torrential rains and landslides have caused some casualties,” she said, but declined to give specific figures.

In Hubei’s Zigui county, the death toll from a landslide along Qinggan river, a tributary of the Yangtze, was raised to five, with 19 people missing and feared dead.

The landslide had caused several boats in the river to capsize, sucking 10 people into the raging stream, the Chutian Metropolitan News reported.

Premier Wen Jiabao, who visited the flood-stricken areas over the weekend, urged local officials to stay alert.

“All the nation’s large rivers have entered the main flood season,” Wen was quoted by Xinhua news agency as saying. “In some areas, flood disasters can happen at any time.”

A flood crest on the Huai River was moving east from central China’s Anhui province, where a million people have been evacuated, towards Jiangsu province in the east.

An official at the flood prevention office in Anhui’s provincial capital of Hefei said 1.8 million workers, officials and soldiers had been commandeered to patrol dykes.

The good news was that the downpour had declined somewhat as of Monday, according to the official, who gave his surname as Wang.

“Today there is no heavy rain anywhere in the province. just a bit of drizzle,” he said.—AFP