"The south will be hit by a new round of heavy rain today," the National Meteorological Centre warned on its website, as state television broadcast images of devastation in some of the worst-affected provinces.

The civil affairs ministry said that the downpours and resulting floods and landslides had left 211 people dead and another 119 missing. The weather centre said rain was likely to continue for another three days in some areas.

The disaster, which has hit 10 provinces or regions, has caused an estimated 43 billion yuan (six billion dollars) of economic losses and displaced 2.4 million people.

State television showed images of indoor stadiums filled with adults and children forced from their homes and resting on blankets.

Thousands of soldiers have been dispatched to flood-hit areas to help in rescue and evacuation work, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Troops were filmed struggling up soaked hills with food supplies to help residents stuck in their villages and carrying rowing boats to areas submerged in brown, muddy water.

In the hard-hit province of Jiangxi, authorities have carried out a large-scale evacuation after a dyke breach on the Fuhe river flooded a large swathe of land including some towns.

Yu Shenghua, a spokesman for Fuzhou city, where the dyke is located, told AFP that 95,000 residents had been evacuated so far and that thousands remained to be moved.

According to the national flood control headquarters, 34 rivers in Jiangxi alone had breached their warning marks, and three of these triggered the most serious flooding in 50 years.

In neighbouring Fujian province, state television showed images of rain-drenched workers and diggers piling earth on to riverbanks to try to hold back the deluge.

The government has allocated 253 million yuan (37.2 million dollars) for rescue and relief efforts and has already sent more than 30,000 tents to affected areas to house the displaced, the civil affairs ministry said.

On Tuesday, President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao Tuesday called for all-out efforts to combat the floods and evacuate areas threatened by dyke bursts.

Alternating floods and droughts have plagued China's people for millennia.

The current floods are among the worst in south China since 1998, when over 3,600 people were killed and more than 20 million displaced, Xinhua said.

Large flood-hit areas of southern and southwestern China, particularly Guizhou, Guangxi and Chongqing, had only just recently emerged from a crippling drought that in some regions was the worst in a century.

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