The New Nation - Internet Edition

Reuters, Beijing

Torrential rain isolated more than 20,000 people in an area of southwest China still recovering from a devastating earthquake in May, state media said on Thursday, with 14 people killed and dozens missing.

Heavy rain caused flash floods, cave-ins and landslides in mountainous Sichuan province near the epicenter of the quake, where survivors are still living in tents and pre-fabricated houses.

At least 80,000 people were killed in the May 12 earthquake. Thirty-eight people are missing and roads and telephone lines have been cut in the storms, Xinhua news agency said. The downpours began to pound Mianyang city and surrounding countryside in Sichuan province on Monday night, it said.

Mianyang encompasses Beichuan and other areas that were the hardest-hit counties in the Sichuan earthquake.

The rainstorms were separate to a typhoon which plowed into south China on Wednesday, killing at least 13 people, closing schools, cancelling flights, uprooting trees and bringing down billboards in several cities. Many rivers burst their banks.

Among the dead was the chief engineer of a British freighter tossed around in the storm off Guangdong, Xinhua said.

Thousands of homes and large areas of forest and farms were destroyed, the China Daily said.