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Weeklong storms in China trap tourists, kill 86

BEIJING » At least 100 tourists, including 38 Vietnamese nationals, were trapped in northwest China after a landslide cut off a road amid weeklong storms that have flooded rivers and triggered mudslides, killing at least 86 people, state media said Saturday (Friday in Hawaii).

The tourists got trapped Friday night in the northwest province of Gansu after a landslide cut off traffic, China’s official Xinhua News Agency said. They were en route to a nature reserve in Sichuan province, which has been hit the hardest by the storms, and road repair work was under way in an effort to free them, the report said.

Sichuan has reported at least 48 storm-related deaths over the past week. A massive mudslide that struck a scenic resort outside the city of Dujiangyan in Sichuan on Wednesday killed 43 people, the ruling Communist Party’s People’s Daily said Saturday.

An entire hillside collapsed onto clusters of holiday cottages where city dwellers escape summer heat, a survivor told Xinhua.

Flooding in Sichuan was the worst in 50 years for some areas, with more than 220,000 people forced to evacuate.

Mudslides and flooding are common in China’s mountainous areas, killing hundreds of people every year, but in some areas the current floods are already the worst in half a century.

In the northwest province of Shaanxi, 23 people died in landslides or house collapses. At least 12 workers were killed in the northern province of Shanxi when a violent rainstorm collapsed an unfinished coal mine workshop. Another three people were drowned in a car in Hebei province outside Beijing.

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