China reported more casualties on Sunday as rescuers retrieved the bodies of people missing in floods and mud-rock flows triggered by heavy rains in recent days in many parts of the country.

 

Rescuers retrieved two more bodies Sunday at the Xiaojiangping Dam near the Sujiahekou Hydropower Station in Tengchong county, Yunnan Province, bringing the death toll from the mud-rock flow early Thursday to 29.

 

The two dead, a man and a woman, have been identified to be workers from Chongqing Municipality.

 

The mud-rock flow triggered by continuous rains swept through three tents where 74 construction workers lived. Thirty-five managed to escape and ten were injured.

 

Also in Tengchong county, four villagers died and three were injured in a landslide that occurred Saturday morning in a mining area near Xinqi village when they were clearing the mud debris at the mine so as to carry out illegal mining, confirmed the Tengchong county government.

 

In a separate accident, armed police and divers have salvaged six bodies of the workers at the Shashapo hydropower station in Daguan county, Yunnan. They are still searching for the last missing one.

 

A flood hit the station under construction around 2:40 p.m. Thursday, leaving seven people working at the site missing. The seven were from a hydropower construction company in Sichuan Province.

 

In flood-ravaged Lincang City, seven people have been confirmed dead and ten others injured. More than 227,000 residents in eight counties were affected in continuous rainfall, which incurred 300 million yuan (US$40 million) in economic loses.

 

Floods also plagued other regions like Yingjiang county and Pu'er city, leaving at least three dead, eight missing and 117,000 people affected.

 

The Yunnan Provincial Civil Affairs Department said 163 people have been killed and eight missing since late May from lightning strikes, floods and mud-rock flows. More than five million people were affected.

 

More than 18,600 residents were evacuated and 321,000 hectares of farmland were damaged in the wake of heavy rains and floods, which incurred over 2 billion yuan (264 million U.S. dollars) in economic loses.

 

In central China's Hubei Province, the seventh rainstorm to hit the province between Tuesday and Saturday since June 18 left two dead and two missing.

 

The seven rainstorms affected 13 million people in the province. Working teams from the provincial government have rushed to the affected areas to coordinate disaster-relief work.

 

In east China's Anhui Province, hundreds of thousands of people are working to prevent the long soaked dykes of swelling Huaihe river from being breached. The river is seeing the second biggest floodwater this summer since 1954.

 

More than one million people have been evacuated in Henan, Anhui and Jiangsu provinces from the projected path of floodwater from the Huaihe River. There is no report of death from the Huaihe River flood.

 

By July 16, China's death toll from natural disasters was 715 with 129 people missing, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said on Thursday.

 

The figures showed 200 million people were affected by natural disasters, including floods, landslides, droughts, gales, snowstorms and earthquakes, while 4.45 million people were forced to leave their homes.  

 

(Xinhua News Agency July 23, 2007)