Scores killed by China’s flooding

(Vatican Radio) North eastern China is suffering its worst floods in 15 years. Heavy rain has left at least a hundred people dead and homes and crops destroyed.

Soldiers heaved sandbags into place to strengthen a dyke in Heilongjiang province, where some entire towns are submerged; in neighbouring Liaoning province, more than 6,000 buildings have collapsed. Across north eastern China, the floods have affected almost four million people, official figures show, and on Monday China's president demanded an all-out effort to save lives and livelihoods.

Rescuers in small boats like this one have been trying to help people stranded on the upper floors of buildings, throwing them supplies such as bottled water.

There has been unusually heavy rainfall. And the floods will likely damage China's harvest this year. The northeast is where much of the nation's corn is grown, and more than three quarters of a million hectares of farmland are estimated to be underwater.

And it all adds to losses last week in southern China when Typhoon Utor made landfall, leaving at least 22 people dead there.

Listen to Alastair Wanklyn’s report: