BEIJING: Evacuation efforts were under way yesterday as hundreds of thousands of people sought to escape rising waters on China's central Huai River, which is threatening to overflow its banks amid torrential rains, officials and press reports said.
Flood prevention work along the Huai River has reached a critical juncture, local officials said, following a government report on Friday that announced 569 deaths due to flooding in China so far this year as some 2.29 million people have been evacuated from disaster areas around the country.