FLOODING HAS forced more than 250,000 people out of their homes in northern China, near the North Korean border, as the Yalu river reached its highest level in more than a decade.
Officials said 253,500 residents had been safely evacuated as the Yalu burst its banks, and workers were racing to build sand-bag flood barriers.
More than 2,000 soldiers have been mobilised to rescue beleaguered residents, with 70 vehicles, 38 speed boats and six helicopters taking part in rescue operations.
Four people in the border crossing town of Dandong, including a couple in their 70s and a mother and son, died when their homes were swept away by floods, the Xinhua news agency reported.
Among those rescued was a 23-year-old woman who gave birth just hours after she was airlifted out of the flood zone.
Across the border, North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said flooding from the Amnok, as the Yalu is known in Korean, had overrun houses and buildings in more than five villages, swamping agricultural land.
The Dandong flooding is merely the latest disaster in China’s worst flood season in over a decade.
Landslides caused by heavy rains have smothered communities in western China and more than 2,500 people have been killed. The worst single incident was in Zhouqu county in Gansu province, where a landslide killed 1,435 people.
Authorities in the northwestern province called off rescue efforts for the 330 people still missing, fearful that the recovery of corpses buried for two weeks would spread disease.
The bad weather is affecting all ends of the country. In the south, on the tropical island of Hainan, residents were getting ready for the arrival of a tropical storm, expected to reach the island late last night or early today.
