Continuous torrential rain hit the northern part of east China's Fujian Province since last Friday, claiming 13 lives with three others missing, local flood control and drought relief authorities said on Thursday.

By 4:00 Wednesday afternoon, Nanping City of the province reported 650,000 people and 66,667 hectares of farmland affected and more than 10,000 houses collapsed in the rainstorm, with more than 110,000 local residents evacuated. The disaster has also incurred direct economic losses of 1.5 billion yuan (US$180.7 million), the flood control department said.

Rainfall exceeded 300 mm in 10 counties and districts in Nanping, and of them three had precipitation surpassing 400 mm.

Traffic on the National Highway No. 205 and 316 were closed due to the continuous rainstorm, and there were 1,100 landslides on the highway's Nanping sections, the local flood control authorities said.

Sources with the provincial flood control and drought relief headquarters said that the downpour-triggered flood in the Minjiang, a major river in Fujian, was one that occurs every 35 years.

Flood pouring into county seat in Guangxi

The county town of Pingnan in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region was hit by floods that was seldom seen in 100 years on Thursday morning.

The water level at the Pingnan Hydrographic Station reached 35.35 meters, higher than the record level of 35.08 meters set in 1998.

Water flooded into the county town from underground pipelines and through breaches in two houses within a 1.5-km-long area for which there was no anti-flood embankment. About 500 people are working hard to block up the breaches, said Mo Yixiang, a party official of the county,

The water levels of major rivers, including the Qianjiang, Xunjiang and Xijiang rivers, in the northern and central part of Guangxi have all exceeded the warning line due to torrential rains and floods that started late last week, said the regional flood control and drought relief headquarters.

Pingnan is located at the Xunjiang River valley.

(Xinhua News Agency June 23, 2005)