Flood Bursts Levee in China; Hundreds Believed Swept Away
BEIJING — Flood waters burst through a sodden levee protecting towns along China’s flood-swollen Yangtze River, state media reported Tuesday, and a human rights group said more than 1,000 people were believed to be missing.
Main Yangtze dikes remained intact, but secondary levees were breached in at least two counties and a city in central China’s Hubei province, the official China Youth Daily reported.
The newspaper gave no casualty figures, saying only that the flooding had caused “huge loss of life and property.” But a human rights group said 150 soldiers and hundreds of villagers were swept away when a levee collapsed Saturday in Hubei’s Jiayu County.
Millions of soldiers and civilians have been working the dikes as waters in the Yangtze reached levels unseen since floods in 1954 killed more than 30,000 people.
Meanwhile, in South Korea, heavy rains flooded subway stations in Seoul and sent soggy hillsides tumbling, while the death toll from weekend floods and mudslides in southern regions rose to 58.
In north-central Japan, torrential rains inundated about 14,000 homes, and an elderly woman drowned when she was swept away by a river, police said.
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