Fifty-nine people were confirmed dead in floods and landslides triggered by rainstorms that ravaged southwest China's Yunnan Province in recent days, authoritative sources said on Saturday.

 

Rainstorms caused floods and landslides from Wednesday to Saturday in several counties and cities such as Pu'er and Dehong, affecting 386,000 people and eight went missing, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the National Commission for Disaster Deduction.

 

Local governments relocated 6,537 people to safe places.

 

Rains destroyed more than 4,000 houses, and affected 15,560 hectares of crops, including the devastation of 1,780 hectares, causing more than 132 million yuan (US$17.4 million) in direct property losses to local people, half of which in the agricultural sector.

 

Twenty-seven people were killed in a mud-rock flow triggered by the rain in the province on Thursday.

 

Meanwhile, a 176-kilometer highway linking Tengchong County in Yunnan and Myanmar's Myitkyina had been severed by mud-rock flows, a local official confirmed on Saturday.

 

The southwest mountainous province, bordering Myanmar, is on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau that is prone to danger from earthquake, landslides and torrential rains.

 

Severe flooding has hit about half of China since the start of summer, claiming 400 lives so far, one of the worst rainy seasons since 1998.

 

A total of 545 people were killed by natural disasters in China in the first half of the year, official statistics show.

 

(Xinhua News Agency July 22, 2007)