Flooding kills hundreds in China, Pakistan, India

WUHAN , China, July 4 (UPI) -- At least 186 people are dead after rainstorms over the weekend caused flooding and mudslides across 1,000 miles of central and southern China and more rain is expected.

In Pakistan, at least 43 people have died and several others are missing after heavy rain and flash floods in northern Pakistan close to the Afghan border early Sunday. In the northern Indian state of Uttrakhand, 28 are dead and another 18 are missing, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police Force and National Disaster Response Force and Civil Defense told CNN.

In China, the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters said more rain, including the first monsoon of the season, is expected in the next 10 days. The Yangtze River basin overflowed as four to 20 inches of rain hit seven provinces in the past five days; 45 people remain missing, 1.5 million people have been displaced, 33 million people are affected and an estimated $7.6 billion in economic losses has been caused.

In the southern provinces, 9,000 houses collapsed, and officials have issued warnings about mudslides. Among the dead are 23 people in Guizhou province, killed in a mudslide, and eight in the Hubei province city of Wuhan, who died when a wall collapsed, state media reported.

Hubei is the most hard-hit of China's provinces. Water levels on the Jushi River, a Yangtze tributary, rose over 26 feet in a single day, flooding at least 23 villages. In the Hubei's Macheng City, soldiers used explosives to open a relief channel for a reservoir, near several railway hubs and highway lines, to avert a dam break.

In Pakistan, mosques, houses and an army post in Ursoon village in the southwest of Chitral district in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province were heavily damaged.

"Sixteen of the dead were offering prayers in the mosque when it was swept away by the flood," spokesperson for the provincial disaster management authority Latifur Rehman told Al Jazeera.