CHINA appealed for foreign help yesterday after at least 168 people were killed and half a million others were evacuated as a result of the worst floods in half a century struck four provinces. More than a billion dollars in damage has been done.
The civil affairs ministry said more than 10 million people had been affected after waters began rising on Saturday in the eastern provinces of Anhui and Zhejiang, Jiangxi in the south east, and Guizhou in the south. Some 764,000 people were cut off, it said in a statement.
It added that 448,100 people had been evacuated by a thousands strong army of civilian and military emergency workers, while more than 330,000 homes had been destroyed in 2,520 villages.
In an apparent sign of the gravity of the crisis, the ministry said the stricken areas "are willing to accept aid nationally and from abroad".
China is generally reluctant to seek disaster relief from foreign countries.
The flooding swamped 700,000 hectares (1.75 million acres) of farmland, killing 31,000 head of livestock and inflicting economic damage of more than 10 billion yuan (£774,419), the ministry said.
The statement reported only 111 deaths, 52 of them in Guizhou, but a provisional toll compiled from several Chinese sources put the known total at more than 168, bringing the fatalities during the monsoon season to more than 270.
Nearly 1,500 people are injured and dozens are missing. The worst affected areas are located adjacent to and lie south of the Yangtze, the longest river in China.
A Red Cross official contacted in Guizhou, which in the past few days has experienced its heaviest rainfall this century, put the number of deaths at 108.
A landslide in a railway station in the provincial capital of Guiyang left 16 people dead and another 13 missing, the Beijing Youth Daily said.
Guizhou had already suffered a heavy toll of 96 deaths during heavy rains in May and June.
In Anhui, heavy flooding was caused by the Huaihe, Xinan and Yangtze rivers, leaving 39 dead and 1,178 injured.
The worst hit areas were the districts of Xuancheng, Huangshan and Chizhou, in the south west of the province.
In Zhejiang province alone, more than 251 millimetres (10.4 inches) of rain had fallen in the space of two days, leaving at least 20 dead and 29 people missing, although the toll was likely to rise.
In Zhejiang's provincial capital of Hangzhou, meteorologists predicted at least four more days of rain and said certain areas still risked being entirely engulfed by flooding if preventive measures were not taken immediately, the China Daily reported.
Hangzhou officials estimated the damage at more than $120 million, the official English language newspaper said.
The city's West Lake, one of the most famous tourist sites in China, was closed yesterday for the first time in nearly 50 years because of the flooding, a local official, Mr Wang Bairong, said.