In this photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, residents use rafts to sail through flooded streets in Yangshuo County, southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Friday, June 13, 2008. Heavy rains in southern China triggered floods that killed six people and forced the evacuation of 150,000 residents, state media reported Saturday. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Cheng Ruihua)
Flooding in China kills 55; 1 million flee
BEIJING (AP) — At least 55 people have died and seven are missing in flooding across a broad stretch of southern China, state media reported Sunday.
More than 1.2 million people have been forced to flee their homes across nine provinces, including Sichuan, which is still reeling from last month's earthquake that killed almost 70,000 people, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Heavy rain in Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan provinces will further raise water levels downstream, especially in the coastal manufacturing powerhouse of Guangdong, Xinhua says. Most of those areas are expected to receive more heavy rain over the next 10 days.
Just to the south, communities with tens of thousands of people were threatened by the swollen Xijiang River in the Guangxi region, where a 130-foot crack had opened in an embankment near Changzhou, Xinhua said.
Nearly 120,000 people fled to high ground in the nearby town of Longhua when river water began to pour through the gap, it said.
"If the crack widened and the dike collapsed, the flood would directly threaten the safety" of the city of Wuzhou on Guangxi's border with Guangdong, Zhang Jinshen, a regional flood control official, was quoted as saying by Xinhua.
The Chinese provinces hit by the flooding are highlighted in red on the above mapOver 50 people have been confirmed dead and at least one million people have fled from their homes as a result of heavy flooding across much of southern China.

In the Guangdong and Jiangxi provinces alone, at least 6,000 homes have been submerged and destroyed by the flood.

Further rainfall is expected to occur throughout the next ten days.

The China Meteorological Administration (CMA) has issued a warning on the situation. "Faced with the increasingly severe rain and flood situation, at 16 o’clock of June 12, Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters of Guangxi urgently started level 2 flood control emergency response and required the relevant departments and places to prepare immediately so as to ensure the work of flood control and drought relief," the CMA said in a statement released on Friday.