Flooding death toll hits 536, says Chinese govt

Flooding and landslides in areas throughout China have killed 536 people over the past two weeks, forcing the evacuation of 1.4 million and making this one of the deadliest summer rainy seasons in a decade, the government said today.

Damage was worst in the south, where torrential rains and mudslides have killed at least 97 people this week and left another 41 missing, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

The death toll was higher than most of the rainy seasons of the past decade, though still below that of 1998, when 4,150 people were killed in summer flooding in central and north-eastern China, Xinhua said.

The hardest-hit area was a five-province swath of the south, including Guangdong, China’s most populous province and the heart of its booming export industries, news reports said.

Roads and railways were cut by rising floodwaters, including the main Beijing-Hong Kong rail line, Xinhua said.

Flooding in parts of Guangxi, a poor, mountainous region on China’s southern coast, was the worst in a century, according to state media.