Wide areas of southern China were placed on high alert on Sunday for further flooding, as officials said more than 200 people had been killed and over 100,000 homes destroyed by floods in the past week. Heavy rains were expected to trigger further floods and landslides in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in the coming 10 days, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Vice Premier Hui Liangyu called on local governments to ensure the safety of major rivers and prepare for annual floods. Xinhua put the death toll from flooding at over 200 people so far and said another 17 million people were affected. Some 138,000 homes had been destroyed.
