Four people have been killed and 27 others injured in landslides triggered by heavy rains in Yunyang County, in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality.

Rainstorms began to lash Yunyang on June 16 and have caused more than 140 landslides, leading to the destruction of more than 1,000 kilometers of roads, 869 houses and 2,500 hectares of crops, said a local government official on Monday. Nearly 1,600 people have been evacuated.

Direct economic losses caused by landslides stand at more than 100 million yuan, according to the Yunyang disaster relief office.

The Yunyang government has stepped up monitoring of areas prone to landslides and dispatched 11 work teams comprising more than 1,000 officials to towns and villages to aid the disaster relief work.

(Xinhua News Agency June 26, 2007)