The Ministry of Civil Affairs on Friday sent a rescue team to flood-hit areas of south China's Fujian Province, where rainstorms have left 22 people dead since Tuesday.

Non-stop rainstorms have hit central and northern Fujian since May 30, destroying about 19,000 homes. More than 50,000 people have been evacuated.

According to weather?report on Friday in Beijing, south China is likely to be soaked by heavy rainfall in the next 10 days, with a rainbelt forecast to linger in skies over many provinces south of the Yangtze River and parts of southwest China's Yunnan and Guizhou provinces.

"Heavy rains with precipitation from 50 to 150 millimeters will sweep over central, south and southwest China; maximum rainfall may reach more than 200 millimeters in a few areas," a weather official predicted.

Li Zhangjun, deputy director of the Forecasting Services and Disaster Mitigation Department of the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), urged authorities in the south to be well prepared for possible disasters like water-logging and floods in the days ahead.

In southern China, floods have claimed 59 lives so far this year, with 11 people still missing, E Jingping, secretary general of the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters, said on Thursday.

Natural disasters triggered by heavy rain in the first five months of the year have also inconvenienced 19 million people and destroyed 71,000 homes, causing direct economic losses of more than 13.1 billion yuan (US$1.6 billion), the official said.

About 1 million hectares of farmland have been affected by floods, said E, who is also vice-minister of the Ministry of Water Resources.

"The direct economic losses, disaster-hit areas and population (affected) were close to the average figures of previous years," said the official, adding that the number of casualties was much lower.

The worst flood-hit provinces are Guangdong in south China, Fujian and Jiangxi in east China, and Hunan and Hubei in central China, he said.

The month-long heavy rains has flooded a town in Dapu County in the northeast of Guangdong Province.

The flood struck a town called Chayang in the county on Thursday and the waters have edged up to about 4 metres on the streets there. More than 5,000 people have been evacuated.

"It just poured and has lasted for about a month," Li Zhonghong, an official with the county government, told China Daily over the phone. "Two hydropower stations nearby had to discharge water on Thursday, and the town below was submerged."

Like the case in Dapu, almost the entire province of Guangdong has been battered by never-ending heavy rains in the past month.

Latest official statistics indicate that the month-long deluge, including the Chanchu rainstorm in the middle of the month, have stricken 602 towns in 75 cities, counties or districts across the province and a total population of 8.5 million has been hit by the catastrophe.

According to the provincial meteorological center, rainfall in most of the regions in the province reached a record high in the month and rainfall in half of the regions in the province was about twice as high as the May average.

In the north, overcast and rainy days are expected, along with drastic weather changes in summer like lightning and gales.

Drought will continue to affect parts of the Inner Mongolia and northeast China's Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces, China's major forest zones, with a high risk of forest fires remaining, Li Zhangjun warned.

The lasting drought in north China has resulted in a shortage of drinking water for 9.49 million people, according to E.

The drought has affected 12.1 million hectares of farmland, mainly in the northern and northeastern areas.

The shortage of drinking water affects 8.7 million livestock, the official said.

This month, the country should also brace itself for more typhoons as two to three tropical cyclones are expected in the Northwest Pacific Ocean or the South China Sea.

Following Chanchu, the first typhoon to hit the country this year, another tropical cyclone is likely to make a landfall along southeast China's coastal regions later this month, the CMA's weather forecasters say.

(Xinhua News Agency, China Daily June 3, 2006)