(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-06-19 19:44

WENCHUAN - China has finished evacuating 111,476 people from an area near the epicenter of last month's earthquake in Sichuan province to avoid secondary disasters triggered by heavy rains.

A total of 72,000 people in quake-hit Wenchuan County have been relocated hours before it started to rain on Wednesday night.

The three-day mass relocation concluded at 8 p.m., said the Aba prefectural work team of disaster prevention, just two hours before a heavy rain hit the county.

Wu Zegang, deputy party secretary of Aba, said the risks of inundation and geological disasters such as landslide will rise in the looming main flood season.

"The top priority of our relief work is to transfer the residents whose lives are menaced by secondary disasters to safer areas," Wu said.

Emergency workers have built 2,458 makeshift houses and 34,000 tents for the displaced people.

The rest of the relocated residents are from nine counties of Aba Prefecture, which governs 13 counties including Wenchuan, the epicenter of the May 12 quake and is inhabited mainly by Tibetans and people of the Qiang ethnic group.

The powerful 8.0 magnitude quake struck Sichuan Province with Wenchuan as its epicenter. In Wenchuan alone, 15,941 people were killed, leaving 7,662 missing and 34,583 injured.