BEIJING - Heavy rain was pounding areas around the Yangtze River in east and central China on Thursday, weather bureaus said, prompting fears of further floods in the wake of earlier deluges that left more than 550 dead or missing.

Strong rain and rainstorms were affecting regions around the historically flood-prone river in Jiangxi, Anhui, Hubei and Zhejiang provinces, officials at the local meteorological bureaus told AFP.

China has been bracing itself for especially severe floods this summer, especially along the Yangtze. Last month, Chinese flood prevention experts warned that the El Nino weather phenomenon was likely to cause abnormal weather, including high rainfall, cyclones and strong tides. Jiangxi province has already been particularly badly affected after a dyke burst around Fuzhou city, temporarily trapping up to 20,000 people on Wednesday. An official at the city government who gave his name as Wu said that by Thursday the last 2,000 of those cut off by the floodwaters had now been moved to safety.

These rescue efforts involved more than 2,000 soldiers and police, the state Xinhua news agency said, adding that heavy rain in the province since June 13 had inundated 40 counties and cities, affecting 4.5 million people. Large amounts of farmland had also been flooded, Xinhua said, adding to the already great financial cost of the floods.

Elsewhere a record 347 milimetres of rainfall was recorded in Zhangjiajie city in central Hunan province, flooding schools, shops and homes, Xinhua said. The downpour forced the closure of the railway running through the city, while several factories and hotels were also affected, the news agency reported. Landslides and subsidence also closed two highways in the province, it said.

The Beijing Evening News reported on Thursday that vegetable prices in the capital had already risen as a result of crop damage. However the human cost remained unclear, with no official death toll released for some days and local information coming in piecemeal. Earlier estimates put the tally at just over 550 dead or missing, the bulk of them perishing during heavy rain earlier this month in the northern province of Shaanxi.

Wu in Fuzhou city on Thursday said 22 people were known to have died in floods locally with eight more missing -- lower casualty figures than given the previous day -- while other officials refused to comment. Chinese authorities are often reluctant to fully report the true extent of natural disasters, with the information being treated as an official secret. The fear, expressed last week by Premier Zhu Rongji, is that this summer's floods could end up being worse than those along the Yangtze in 1998, the most severe for years, which killed more than 4,000 people.

Copyright 2002 AFP / WeatherOnline