By Rupert Wingfield-Hayes
BBC News, Beijing |
 Some villagers are still hunting for missing relatives |
The death toll from flooding in China has now passed 70, with hundreds of thousands more driven from their homes. Torrential rain has been pounding large areas of southern China for the last five days, swelling rivers and washing away villages.
With many remote areas still cut off, local officials say the death toll may rise much further.
China's annual rainy season is less than a week old, but already it is wreaking havoc.
Across a huge swathe of southern China up to 20cm (8in) of rain have been falling every day this week.
The results are predictable. Rivers have burst their banks, mud slides have engulfed whole villages. In worst-hit Hunan province 50 are dead, another 50 are missing.
Around 200,000 more have been forced into temporary shelters. Thousands of hectares of farmland lie under water and mud.
Such disasters hit China every summer. Flooding is made worse by widespread destruction of forests and reclamation of flood plains for farmland. But the really worrying thing this year is that the annual destruction has begun so early.
One-Minute World News 
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