Floods kill more than 100 in China

More than 100 people have died and around 115 are missing after floods and a typhoon hit parts of China, according to the country’s Ministry of Civil Affairs.

Heavy rain last Wednesday has caused floods in the north-eastern provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang, as well as south China’s Guangdong Province.

China’s Xinhua news agency described the floods in the north-east as the “worst flooding in decades”.

Badly hit provinces

It reported that north-eastern China’s Liaoning Province and south China’s Guangdong Province in particular have suffered the most number of casualties, with 54 deaths and 22 deaths respectively, as of 9am local time on Monday.

Southern regions of China, including Guangdong Province, were hit by Typhoon Utor last week after making landfall and killing around 22 people, reports have said.

Economic losses

The disasters have caused economic losses of ¥9.86bn ($1.6bn) in north-east China and more than ¥10bn in south China’s Guangdong, Guangxi and Hunan provinces, with ¥8.63bn in Guangdong alone, Xinhua reported.

The floods have also caused crop failure to more than 256,000 hectares of farmland in north-east regions of China, one of the country’s major breadbaskets, the news agency reported.