Severe floods battering China have claimed more than 700 lives and left millions homeless, official Chinese media reported yesterday.
According to official figures released by China's Ministry of Civil Affairs, 725 people have been killed in flooding which has caused more than £6 billion damage, the Xinhua news agency said.
Figures, which were taken prior to these latest floods, show that 400 people had died in flooding so far this year. The ministry said more than 5.53 million people had been relocated and an estimated 1.67 million homes had been destroyed.
The ministry figures also said some 11.31 million hectares of crops have been affected by the floods, with 1.56 million hectares expected to yield nothing this year.
Earlier yesterday, reports said that flood-fighting stations were unstaffed and local officials had little knowledge of anti-flood work in China's north-east Heilongjiang province.
Despite being hit by flooding for more than one month, anti-flood headquarters across Heilongjiang were operating "badly", according to a report carried out by the Workers' Daily and reprinted in the China Daily.
More than 20 cities in Heilongjiang have been battered by heavy rains since early July, and dams destroyed during last year's flooding have not yet been rebuilt, according to reports.
The Songhuajiang and Nenjiang rivers flooded the province last summer, inflicting economic losses of 28 billion yuan (£2.4 billion) and submerging 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres) of land.
The entire Yangtse basin - home to some 400 million people - was hit by the worst floods in decades last summer, which killed more than 4,000 people and caused damage worth 200 billion yuan (£18 billion).