Beijing/ Tokyo: A total of 47 people were dead and 22 missing as floods wreaked havoc in central China’s Hunan Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in the south.
In Hunan, heavy rain that started on June 22 has killed 27 people with eight still missing, Xinhua news agency reported.
The ensuing floods have forced the evacuation of more than 1.2 million people. More than 38,000 homes have collapsed and nearly 880,000 hectares of crops have been damaged.
The water levels in Dongting Lake and several major rivers have risen above the warning levels.
About 15,000 people have been sent to the front line and over 160 million yuan (Dh86 million) has been allocated to disaster relief in Hunan.
Rain is forecast to weaken in Hunan in the next few days but heavy rain is expected in some areas.
In Guangxi, rain has killed 20 people and left 14 missing. Around 20,000 houses are either collapsed or damaged.
The disaster has inflicted direct economic losses of nearly 4.6 billion yuan. Authorities have allocated 10 million yuan to the affected areas.
Heavy rain and overflowing rivers in southern Japan have forced the evacuation of almost 400,000 people, public broadcaster NHK said on Wednesday.
“Rivers are bursting their banks and there are landslides,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters.
“This could lead to large-scale damage. The prime minister has ordered us to stay on top of the situation.” In Fukuoka Prefecture, about 375,000 people were ordered to evacuate as swollen rivers threatened to inundate homes.
In neighbouring Oita Prefecture, more than 21,000 people have been ordered to leave heir homes, according to NHK.
People forced from their homes were staying in evacuation centres in schools and government buildings on high ground.
Japan’s Self Defence Force (SDF) had responded to requests from both prefectures for assistance with the flooding, according to a SDF spokesman.
The heavy rain over the south was forecast to continue into Thursday.
The rain in Japan comes on the heels of a storm system that caused severe flooding across southern China that killed 56 people and cost almost $4 billion (Dh14 billion) in damage.
