Floods kill 172 in China
China's Sichuan province faced the threat of epidemics yesterday after the worst flooding in a century killed at least 172 people and left scores missing, while water levels at the huge Three Gorges Dam swelled. Villages in Hubei province along the...
China's Sichuan province faced the threat of epidemics yesterday after the worst flooding in a century killed at least 172 people and left scores missing, while water levels at the huge Three Gorges Dam swelled.
Villages in Hubei province along the Yangtze River downstream of the dam braced for disaster, but officials declared the world's largest hydroelectric project ready to cope with the floodwaters.
Police and People's Liberation Army soldiers were bringing relief to 6,000 stranded residents of Dazhou city in southwestern Sichuan and other areas trying to recover from what the official Xinhua news agency described as a "catastrophe which is not likely to happen in a century".
Most of the deaths in Sichuan and Chongqing municipality to the east were caused by landslides, fast-moving mud-and-rock flows and flash floods sweeping through mountain valleys from Thursday to Monday, Xinhua said.