The Xinhua news agency said that as of Tuesday, rain-triggered floods had affected some 29 million people and 997,000 had been evacuated.

The latest toll is more than double that reported by Xinhua Monday following rains along the Yangtze River, China's longest, over the past week.

Heavy downpours in central and eastern China have caused water levels in major lakes and some river tributaries to rise alarmingly, state media has said.

Earlier Tuesday, 17 people were confirmed dead and 44 others were missing after torrential rains sent landslides crashing into villages in southwestern China, officials and state media said.

In Yunnan province, four people were killed and 42 others went missing when rocks came crashing down on a local township in the city of Zhaotong, a local official told AFP.

"The township is located in a river valley surrounded by mountains, people were buried in their homes," said the official from Qiaojia county, who asked not to be named.

"Torrential rains caused the landslides," he added.

Another 53 people were injured in the disaster, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

In neighbouring Sichuan province, two separate landslides left 13 people dead and two missing, the report said.

The disasters continue a run of rain-triggered death and destruction from flooding across a huge area of southern, central and eastern China since June that the government said has left hundreds dead.

China is ravaged every summer by heavy rains and resulting deadly flooding but the extreme weather has been especially severe this year.

Heavy rains continued on Tuesday in regions still recovering from June flooding.

State television broadcast images of flooded town streets in Anhui province in the east and inundated villages and agricultural fields in Hunan in central China.

On one swollen branch of the Yangtze in Anhui province in the city of Tongcheng, authorities were preparing to blast a leaking dyke to prevent flood waters from inundating villages, reports said.

Both Poyang Lake in eastern Jiangxi province and Dongting Lake in Hunan -- two of China's largest inland bodies of water -- were at or near their warning levels, officials had said on Monday.

Meteorological authorities have warned that still more heavy rain was expected in flood-hit regions in coming days.

Rains and flooding have caused economic losses totalling 116 billion yuan (17 billion dollars) since the start of the year, state television said.

burs-dwa/cjo

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