Tens of thousands of people are fleeing floods in China

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Floods in the metropolis of Chongqing on the Yangtze River

Tens of thousands of people have fled severe floods in southern China. In Fengzhou City, more than a thousand people have been cut off from supplies and suffer from food shortages, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported. The flood at the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River in Hubei Province is at the highest level in the history of the huge dam, the authorities warned.

More than 100,000 people were brought to safety in the two cities of Ya'an and Leshan, Xinhua further reported. The state television station CCTV showed soldiers helping people in lifeboats in Fengzhou.

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Rescue operation in Fengzhou

In the southern Chinese province of Sichuan, 21 vehicles fell into a hole in the flood-torn road. No one was injured, according to the Global Times newspaper.

As seen on the CCTV station, the murky water not far from the city of Leshan was so high that it touched the feet of the huge Buddha statue of Leshan - the figure carved into a cliff is 71 meters tall. Since the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, no more floods have touched the feet of the sculpture, reported the station.

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The floods also tore tree trunks and branches with it. A building was shown on television that collapsed from the water. The rescue measures were made more difficult by the fact that some streets were no longer passable due to the flood.

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In Chongqing, too, people have already had to be evacuated - the water could still rise

The flood is expected to hit the city of Chongqing in the southwest of the country by the end of the week, Xinhua reported. Jiuzhaigou National Park in Sichuan Province, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has been closed for security reasons.

Floods in Vietnam too

China's neighbor Vietnam is also struggling with heavy rainfall and flooding. At least six people have died in the mountain regions of the north in the past two days, said the disaster control of the Southeast Asian country. There were deaths in the provinces of Vinh Phúc and Lào Cai, among others.

330 houses and hundreds of hectares of rice fields were also destroyed. In the coming days, the tropical storm Higos is also expected to sweep across northern Vietnam and cause even more damage, the authorities warned.

kko / AFP