BEIJING - TORRENTIAL rain has cut contact with more than 20,000 people in southwest China still recovering from the May 12 earthquake which killed at least 80,000 people.
At least eight people were killed and 38 were missing in the rain which caused flash floods, cave-ins and landslides in mountainous Sichuan province near the epicentre of the quake where survivors are still living in tents and pre-fab houses.
Roads and telephone lines had been cut, Xinhua news agency said.
The downpours began to pound Mianyang city and surrounding countryside in Sichuan province on Monday night, Xinhua news agency said.
Mianyang encompasses Beichuan and other areas that were the hardest-hit counties in the Sichuan earthquake.
The rainstorms were separate to a typhoon which ploughed into south China on Wednesday, killing at least five people, closing schools, cancelling flights, uprooting trees and bringing down billboards in several cities. Many rivers burst their banks.
Thouands of homes and large areas of forestry and farms were destroyed, the China Daily said, suggesting that the death toll may rise.
Typhoon Hagupit had since weakened as it moved into Vietnam, but Hanoi said the country was on high alert for flash floods and landslides.
The army has sent a typhoon alert to more than 38,000 fishermen while the national carrier, Vietnam Airlines, cancelled a domestic northbound flight late on Wednesday.
Hagupit, which means 'lashing' in Filipino, killed at least eight people in the Philippines earlier in the week.
An earthquake measuring 5.7 struck western Nepal on Thursday, the United States Geological Survey said. Xinhua said it also hit Zhongba county in southwest Tibet. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage. -- REUTERS
