At least 20 killed in China floods

China has evacuated 100,000 residents of a southern city to escape a swollen river in one of three provinces where heavy rains…

China has evacuated 100,000 residents of a southern city to escape a swollen river in one of three provinces where heavy rains have triggered landslides and floods killing more than 20 people.

Floodwaters forced the mass evacuation overnight of residents in low-lying areas of the industrial city of Wuzhou, where the Xijiang river had reached 24.42 metres by last night, more than seven metres higher than the warning level, state television said.

Notices on the mass evacuation were posted on walls, warning sirens blared in the dark of night and Wuzhou residents began to load up cars, trucks and carts with valuables and flee the area for higher ground.

"In the face of these floods, the attitude of the government is to make sure that no one is killed," Ren Kuikang, chief of the Wuzhou flood control and drought relief office, told state television.

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Earlier this month, a flash flood swept through a low-lying primary school in northeastern Heilongjiang province, killing 117 people, 105 of them children.

With much of southern China under threat, Premier Wen Jiabao urged local governments to step up the fight against the flooding, which kills hundreds in China each summer and causes millions of yuan in damage to homes and croplands.

Authorities expected the Xijiang to peak on Wednesday night at a hydrographic station in Wuzhou, in Guangxi autonomous region, near the border with the southern province of Guangdong.

Heavy rains have killed nine people since Saturday in Guangdong, where a landslide disrupted traffic on a rail line linking the mainland with Hong Kong, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Rainstorms in eastern Guangdong caused cave-ins on part of the Beijing-Kowloon railway line, forcing dozens of trains to either delay or turn back while repairs were made, it said.

It has been raining heavily for weeks in Hong Kong, which is in the middle of its summer typhoon season - when storms roar in from the South China Sea and cause huge flooding and other damage across south China.

Water levels on two other rivers in Guangxi - the Qianjiang and Xunjiang - were above warning levels and the province had suffered nearly $45 million in economic losses as of Monday due to the recent deluges, Xinhua said, citing local flood control headquarters.

In the southeastern province of Fujian, floods and landslides had killed 12 and left five missing, it said. In Shunchang county alone in northern Fujian, dozens of landslides had buried nine people, killing five. Three were missing.

While the south is suffering a deluge, much of northern China is sweating through a heat wave, which has driven temperatures to nearly 40 C (104 F) in the capital Beijing and convinced the southwestern city of Chongqing to open air raid shelters to provide shady relief.