Floods affect more than 2 million in NE China

CHANGCHUN -- Floods and heavy rains have caused the death of at least 20 people and adversely affected more than 2.2 million in Northeast China's Jilin province, local authorities said.

Persistent rain has brought chaos to 56 county-level regions of the province, forcing 239,000 people to be evacuated, according to the provincial civil affairs department.

At least 585,000 hectares of crops have been damaged, some 12,000 rooms destroyed, with another 146,000 damaged, leading to direct economic losses of over 10 billion yuan($1.7 billion).

Rainstorms have also swept Heilongjiang and Liaoning provinces, also in northeastern China. As of Tuesday, 85 people were confirmed dead and 105 were missing in the worst floods to hit northeast China in more than a decade.

The Jilin government has dispatched 824 tonnes of grain to the disaster areas, and a total of seven million yuan of emergency funds has been allocated by provincial finance department.