Chinese flooding leaves 21 dead

Heavy rains in south-western China have caused flash floods and mudslides, killing at least 21 people, the official Xinhua news agency has said.

Another 11 people remain missing after fierce weather in Sichuan province over the past two days.

Some 112,000 people have been evacuated from their homes, Xinhua reported.

Elsewhere, more than 1.6 million people in the northern province of Gansu are facing water shortages because of severe conditions in the region.

Drought-affected areas have received little or no rainfall in the past two months, officials said.

China has suffered increasingly severe periods of extreme weather in recent years, including floods, drought and powerful typhoons.

Authorities announced recently that the country is likely to be hit by more extreme weather during 2007 than at any time in the past decade.

They blame the changing weather patterns on climate change, a view at least partly backed up by meteorologists.