BEIJING - About 5,000 passengers on four trains were stranded on Thursday night as rain-triggered landslides buried parts of a railway line in Southwest China, local railway authorities said on Friday.

More than 2,000 people with 10 excavators rushed to clear the Chengdu-Kunming rail line, which links the provincial capitals of Sichuan and Yunnan, the Chengdu Railway Bureau said in a statement.

The bureau said it sent food and water to the trapped passengers and buses to evacuate them.

The disruption forced trains to return to their point of origin. About 20,000 passengers on 14 trains were stranded in Chengdu Railway Station, the bureau said.

It said the disrupted railway is expected to resume normal operation in two days.

The disruption came after several rounds of torrential rains battered eight provinces in the Central and South China for two weeks, causing flooding, landslides and other disasters.

The water level in a lake formed by landslide debris blocking water in Shiyan, Hubei province, dropped by 1 meter, after explosives were detonated at four places on its bank to release the water. There is little possibility of its banks collapsing, according to a statement released by State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters on Friday.

Flooding and landslides in Lepa village in the Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region left one person dead and 16 missing.

About 13 workers at a hydropower station under construction in Ganluo county were trapped and two rescue teams were sent there on Friday, the flood control authority statement said.

China's top meteorological authority said on Friday that rainstorms will continue to batter the southern and eastern regions of China over the weekend after torrential rains recently caused rivers to swell, resulting in several deaths.

Rainstorms are forecast in Sichuan, Guizhou and Zhejiang provinces this weekend, the National Meteorological Center said.

The storms follow torrential rainfalls this month that inundated the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.

At least one person died and 16 others remain missing after heavy rains inundated a village in Sichuan on Thursday, the national flood control authority said.

In Guizhou province's Wangmo county, rains have claimed at least 37 lives and injured 1,715 people since June 3. More than 45,000 of the county's residents had to abandon their homes because of flooding.

Water levels in the middle reaches of East China's Qiantang River rose to their highest levels in more than 50 years after recent rainstorms. The State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters said on Friday that it has sent work teams to flood-hit regions to help with relief work.

China Daily - Xinhua

(China Daily 06/18/2011 page3)