Days of heavy rain have driven up the water level of last week's major flood, threatening thousands in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, local officials said.

As of Tuesday, about 7,000 people had been evacuated without casualties in Longtou Village, Yizhou City and Guangxi, said Lu Zhanhong, Yizhou municipal government deputy director of public relations.

There was a break in the rain on Tuesday, but the water level of the flood, which burst out on June 12 and submerged parts of the village, had risen 1.7 meters as of 8 a.m. Monday. The deepest site had reached 8.7 meters, Lu said.

The flood, which had affected 15,000, forced evacuations and other emergency situations, while transport was shut down by mud-rock flows.

A continuous downpour had also threatened a reservoir with a capacity of 1.8 million cubic meters, which forced the evacuation of 3,000 people downstream on Sunday. All had been relocated but their food and shelter needs could not be guaranteed, Lu said.

Five other reservoirs in the mountains had been reported in danger of bursting, something which would flood the village government, Lu said.

More than 750 government officials and police had been sent to the rescue work for the reservoirs up to Monday, he said.

As of 5 p.m. that day, 226 roads in Guangxi had been reported damaged since June 8. Sixty were still shut on Monday, said an official with the transport department of the regional government on Tuesday.

Some roads had also been dredged for temporary use but not completely restored as heavy rain swept Guangxi again from Monday to Tuesday, the official said.

The repaired roads might be shut again by damages caused by rain, the official said.

In neighboring Guangdong Province, the water levels in the swollen rivers of Xijiang and Beijiang were reducing slowly, while experts predicted the water levels would not reduce to below danger lines until Thursday.

The Guangdong headquarters of flood control on Tuesday said 5.67 million people had been affected since June 11 with economic losses totaling 4.01 billion yuan (581 million US dollars).

Downpours continued on Tuesday in the cities of Zhanjiang, Heyuan, Maoming and Meizhou in Guangdong. More rains were forecast in the upper reaches of Xijiang River over the next three days, adding risks of flooding in the province, the headquarters said.

In east China's Zhejiang Province, the Sanbao lock on the Hangzhou Canal to the Qiantang River closed again at 11 a.m. Tuesday, after having been open for just one day, leaving more than 1,000 vessels stranded.

The lock had been closed for six days, said Zhu Jianlin, an official with the administrative bureau of the lock. Only about 200 vessels had navigated through the lock, since only four could pass every 40 minutes, Zhu said.

A ship owner named Chen Congquan told Xinhua that he had run out of food and water over eight days. Chen said his losses were about 500 yuan (about 72 US dollars) a day.

Another 50 mm of rain over a large area of Zhejiang had been forecast, according to the local meteorological station.

The rain raised many rivers, including the Qiantang River. The capital, Hangzhou, and several other cities experienced floods caused by the rain.

In east Fujian Province, rain had been predicted to fall for another three days, and 24-hour totals could reach 50-100 mm in most cities, the local meteorological station said.

The rain could cause geologic disasters in southern and western Fujian in the next 24 hours, according to the report.

Since June 7, there has been continuous heavy rain in 12 provinces and regions in southern China, with some areas getting the most rain in 100 years.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs said rainstorms and floods had killed 63 people, with 13 others missing in nine provinces and region in south China as of Monday. A total of 1.66 million people had been evacuated.

The disaster knocked down 67,000 houses, damaged crops on 1.02 million hectares of farmland and caused a direct economic loss of 14.45 billion yuan.

Rainstorms and floods had ravaged the provinces of Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan, Guangdong, Guizhou and Yunnan and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region since June 6. Among them, Guangxi, Guangdong, Hunan and Jiangxi were worst-hit, the ministry said.

(Xinhua News Agency June 18, 2008)