After months of drought, floods and landslides claim 132 in China

BEIJING (MCT) — After months of punishing drought, China's rainy season has returned with a vengeance, causing floods and landslides that as of Saturday were blamed for 132 deaths.

The Ministry of Water Resources said today that 86 other people are missing and more than 860,000 have fled their homes. The evacuation figure was lower than Saturday's 1.4 million.

China's Ministry of Civil Affairs raised alert levels because of forecasts by the National Meteorological Center of torrential rains in southern and central China in the coming week.

The rains have inundated the provinces of Fujian, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Hunan, Sichuan, Jiangxi and Guizhou and the autonomous region of Guangxi. The latter two have been hard hit by a record drought.

Footage on Chinese state television showed brown waters gushing through city streets, staircases turned into waterfalls, residents seeking safety on rooftops — and the staple of Chinese disaster coverage: troops rescuing children who had been trapped in a flooded school, in Fujian province.

The Civil Affairs Ministry said 75,000 houses had collapsed and 80,000 others had been damaged. More than 10 million people have been affected by the floods.

Contributing: Associated Press