A total of 86,000 people in Xichuan County in central China's Henan Province will be resettled in the coming three months and a half to make way for a massive project diverting water to the arid north.

Most of the people will be removed to other cities and counties in Henan, and about 12,800 people will be relocated to new homes within Xichuan, according to the Henan provincial resettlement headquarters.

The relocation of the villagers, which started Thursday and will last till Aug. 28, marks the beginning of the second half of the resettlements in Henan.

Altogether 162,000 people are supposed to be resettled from Xichuan, a county beside the Danjiangkou Reservoir which is a source of the south-north water diversion project's middle route.

About 76,000 of them were relocated in 2009 and 2010 during the first half of resettlements.

The project will divert water from the Yangtze River via three routes: eastern, middle and western.

According to project plans, about 330,000 people in central Hubei and Henan provinces are to be relocated before the middle route is completed in 2014.

The migrants are mostly residents from the banks of the Danjiangkou Reservoir, which forms the border between Hubei and Henan provinces.

Hubei resettled 76,600 people in 2010. Another 100,000 people will be removed to nearby new homes.