The New Nation - Internet Edition

AP, Beijing

A Chinese news agency says 80,000 people are to be evacuated because of a flood risk in earthquake-ravaged Sichuan province.

Xinhua News Agency said Tuesday that emergency workers aimed to evacuate the people by midnight.

They live downstream from a huge lake that was created by a massive landslide across a river during the May 12 earthquake. China on Tuesday put the death toll from the earthquake that struck Sichuan province on May 12 at 67,183, with the figure certain to rise with 20,790 listed as missing. Nearly 362,000 people were injured. Soldiers and police trekked to the Tangjiashan lake carrying dynamite ready to blast the mud and rubble blocking the flow of water from a river and creating the largest of 35 quake lakes formed when landslides triggered by the massive tremor blocked rivers.

Some 30,000 people living below the lake in and around Beichuan in the mountainous southwestern province have been evacuated as a precaution. In Mianyang, 150,000 people will have been evacuated by midnight on Tuesday, in line with a contingency plan should one third of the lake's 300 million cubic meters of water burst the dam, Xinhua news agency said.

"It's better for them to complain about the trouble that the evacuation would bring than to shed tears after the possible danger," Liu Ning, an official with the Ministry of Water Resources, was quoted as saying.

The lake had risen to 725.3 meters (2,380 feet) on Monday, only 26 meters below the lowest part of the barrier, he said.

By Monday night, around 600 engineers and soldiers had gathered at the landslip and were taking turns to work through the night with bulldozers dropped by helicopters into the area.