Eleven people died and 27 others are missing after torrential rains battered southwest China's Chongqing municipality, causing thousands of houses to collapse, state media said late Tuesday. Nearly 40,000 people have been evacuated from their homes, the official Xinhua news agency quoted the local government as saying.
In Fengjie County, on the vast Yangtze river, landslides have formed two barrier lakes, with the water level rising a metre (three feet) an hour, according to local flood control officers. More than one thousand local residents have been evacuated from the surrounding area. The missing include 11 coal miners who were buried by a landslide on Monday, Xinhua reported. The news agency said a total of 2,251 houses had collapsed in the rainstorms, while 25,000 more homes have been damaged.