16 Jul 2007 03:44:50 GMT
Source: Reuters

BEIJING, July 16 (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of villagers in east
China's Huai river basin, already suffering the region's worst flooding
in 50 years, have been told to brace for more heavy rains this week,
state media reported on Monday.

Torrential summer rains across the country have fed floods and
landslides that had killed 403 people, left 105 missing and forced the
evacuation of 3.17 million by Friday, the China Daily said.

Government authorities warned that water levels along tributaries
feeding the Huai river, which originates in central Henan province and
runs east through densely populated and impoverished parts of Anhui and
coastal Jiangsu provinces, were rising again and threatening to breach
embankments.

Anhui's flood control office flagged further deliberate flooding to ease
pressure on key control points along the river, the paper said.

"The water level on the crucial Wangjiaba Hydrological Station may soon
surge above the danger line as more rains have been forecast in the next
few days," the paper quoted Cheng Dianlong, the office's deputy
director, as saying.

Anhui's Mengwa area, where crops and homes of 157,000 people have
already been submerged, faces another bout of deliberate flooding to
ease pressure at Wangjiaba, the paper said.

Authorities had already flooded nine buffer zones along the Huai to
relieve more than 2 million flood-hit residents in Henan, and mobilised
more than 30,000 troops to help rescue work, the paper said.

The Ministry of Agriculture warned of the threat of disease, especially
bird flu and anthrax, in flood-hit areas, and said animals that have
died should be neither sold nor eaten.

Any outbreaks must be immediately reported, it added.

"Pay special attention to preventing diseases which can be transmitted
by humans and animals," the ministry said in a statement on its Web site
(www.agri.gov.cn).

In a sign of the urgency involved, an Anhui government watchdog sacked
the village party chief of Zhenxing, in Yingshang county, for "not
directing work at the flood front".

"Failing your responsibility during floods is like touching a
high-voltage electric wire," the China Daily quoted a county discipline
official as saying.

Further south, officials in Hunan province were battling to contain a
plague of more than 2 billion rats fleeing the rising waters of Dongting
Lake.

Scientists blamed China's massive Three Gorges Dam project and climate
change for the rodents, whose flight to dry land has seen them ruin
cropland in some 22 counties surrounding the lake.

The controversial dam's "interception of the upper watershed had lowered
water levels and created ideal conditions for a rodent outbreak", the
paper quoted Wu Chenghe, chief of a plantation protection office at
Datong Lake, which runs off Dongting Lake, as saying. (Additional
reporting by Ben Blanchard)