Thousands of people have been trapped or evacuated in northwest China after an unusually early thaw of snow and ice triggered floods, a government official said Thursday.
A total of 11,233 people have been trapped and are unable to move because of the floods in Yili prefecture of Xinjiang region, Wu Yilin, a civil affairs official, told AFP by telephone.
"Many of the houses in the area are poorly built and couldn't cope with the floods," he said. "Altogether 458 houses collapsed, and we've had to evacuate 2,899 people."
No one had expected the thaw to come this early in the year.
But recent temperatures that had been 12 degrees Celsius (53 degrees Fahrenheit) above the average of previous years had melted snow and ice, the state-run China Daily newspaper said.
Source: Agence France-Presse
