2010-06-23 06:54

Beijing - The heavy rains and floods drenching 10 southern provinces and autonomous regions had killed 199 and left 123 missing as of 11 am on Tuesday, a Ministry of Civil Affairs statement said.

A local resident navigates a boat on Tuesday through a fl ooded area of Fuzhou, Jiangxi province. A dyke was breached nearby in the Fu River on Monday night, endangering 145,000 residents. [Agencies]

More than 29 million residents in the areas of Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Chongqing, Sichuan and Guizhou have been affected by the inclement weather.

The downpours have triggered flash floods, inundated crops, disrupted traffic and telecommunications and forced the evacuation of 2.376 million people, the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters said on Tuesday.

A total of 195,000 houses have been destroyed and more than 1.6 million hectares of farmland damaged, pushing the direct economic losses to at least 42 billion yuan ($ 6.2 billion).

Worst hit were the provinces of Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guangdong, Sichuan, Guizhou and Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

By Monday, all of Jiangxi's 26 rivers had exceeded the warning level.

The water levels of six of the watercourses, including the Xin and Fu rivers, have also hit historic highs.

The state flood control office decided on Sunday to decrease the amount of water discharged from the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River to alleviate the pressure in low-lying areas, such as Jiangxi and Hunan.

In Fujian, the flooding and landslides caused by persistent rain have claimed 79 lives and left another 79 missing as of Monday evening. Direct economic losses have reached more than 9.5 billion yuan, Fujian's flood control office said.

At least 24 people have gone missing after flash floods and landslides on June 14 swept away a bus and a mini-van on a mountainside road in Nanping, Fujian.

About 10 large-scale water reservoirs and 1,076 middle and small-sized ones are discharging water to prevent dykes from breaching, the headquarters said.

Guangxi officials have been worried some of the hundreds of dams with construction flaws could be vulnerable to the high water levels, China Youth Daily reported.

Wang Lijia, an official with the water resources bureau of Guangxi's capital Nanning, said 245 dams near the city need repairs.

"These dilapidated dams constitute a major threat to Nanning," the paper quoted Wang as saying.