Floods leave at least 107 dead in China

Flooding in China's north and south caused by heavy rain has left at least 107 dead and inundated roads and farmland, the government and state media said.

Three provinces in China's northeast bore the brunt of the floods with 85 dead and 105 missing in Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning as of 4pm on Monday, the government said.

A total of 37 million residents in that region were affected by flood waters, Xinhua said, which were described by a local newspaper as the worst in 50 years in Liaoning province.

More than 787,000 hectares of farmland in the region, a major grain growing area, were flooded and pictures showed roads in many urban areas looking more like rivers.

Xinhua said that the People's Liberation Army had been mobilized to carry out rescue work.

At the opposite end of the country, rainfall in the wake of Typhoon Utor, which made landfall in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong last week, has killed 22 people and caused 8.6 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) of damage there.

Dykes ruptured near Shantou in eastern Guangdong flooding low-lying homes and killing 10.
Some internet users criticized the official response to the floods.

"Government rescue is too slow. They send troops overseas for military exercise, but don't care about its own people," said a user of the Twitter-like Sina Weibo with the name @Lingchenliangdinan.

"Our farmland is completely flooded. The past year's effort is all gone," said another user @WoxiaotarenkanbuchuanL.

Source: CNN