Thousands of troops are tonight fighting to plug dangerous cracks in a dam above an earthquake-hit Chinese town.

At least 55 people have been killed and 12 are missing amid the worst flooding in eastern China in three decades, the government said today.

Nearly 900,000 people have been evacuated from two regions of southern China where at least 46 have died in flooding that was the worst in a century for some areas, the government said today.