Chinese soldiers using massive earth-moving equipment prepared to blast away part of a landslide today to ease the flooding threat from a river blocked up by the huge earthquake.

Chinese quake rescuers struggled with flooded rivers and dams in danger of collapse threatening to add to the devastation today.

A Chinese news agency has reported that an aftershock has killed one person and injured 260 others in Sichuan province.

Rescuers saved all 354 passengers who were trapped for days in a train that had slowly filled with flood water to neck height, officials said today as raging monsoons coninued to submerge vast swathes of Indian countryside.

MORE than 100 hydroelectric plants in southern China have been ordered shut to preserve water for farming amid a severe drought.