BEIJING _ More than 170 people died and more than 100 were missing after heavy rains touched off floods and landslides in China this week, officials said Saturday. Meanwhile, meteorologists warned that more thunderstorms were expected in the coming days.
In northern China, where most of the deaths occurred, were concentrated, the worst-hit area was Hebei province, which encircles the capital, Beijing. At least 114 people died there, the provincial branch of the Ministry of Civil Affairs told the official New China News Agency on Saturday. An additional 111 people were still missing in Hebei as of Saturday.
Authorities put the number of affected people at more than 8 million, with nearly 300,000 evacuated.
In the city of Xingtai, about 200 miles southwest of Beijing, at least 25 people were dead and 13 missing after the Qili River overflowed its banks in the early hours of Wednesday, flooding homes as people slept.
Saturday evening, the mayor of Xingtai, Dong Xiaoyu, held a news conference and apologized for the failure of city officials to adequately protect residents from the floods.
Some residents questioned whether the disaster in Xingtai was man-made, resulting from the release of floodwaters from a nearby reservoir. But in a news conference Saturday morning, officials denied that was the case, saying the reservoir's floodgate does not open into the river that flooded, but a different waterway.
Army troops were sent to rescue people stranded in flooded areas and deliver emergency aid via helicopter.
Other deaths were reported in central and southern China. A total of 19 people died in Guizhou province and the giant city of Chongqing between Tuesday and Friday, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said. Between June 16 and Friday, 16 people died in Hubei province and another seven in Jiangxi, the ministry said.
That water too ended up in the Qili, causing the deadly floods, officials said. The problem was exacerbated because the Qili narrows in one place near a major highway, they added.
The flooding has inundated farmlands, wiping out crops. In the metropolis of Shijiazhuang, near Xingtai, thousands of residents have been without running water since Thursday and service was not expected to be restored until next week.
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(Nicole Liu in The Times' Beijing bureau contributed to this report.)
