China school flood may have killed 200 people

BEIJING, Monday (Reuters) A mountain flood that swept through a primary school in northwest China may have killed as many as 200 people, mostly children, state media said on Monday, quoting local villagers.

Most of more than 90 refrigerators at the local funeral home each contained the bodies of two children, villager Liu Zixia, whose daughter drowned, told the Shanghai Morning Post.

The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post quoted similar estimates by parents who went to the funeral home to identify their children.

The official death toll stood at 92, including 88 children, and 17 people were missing, Xinhua news agency said.

One distraught father told the China Daily he found the body of his son lying across a desk after Friday's flood at the school in Ning'an, Heilongjiang province.

"The desk's surface was only a little higher than the water level... His nose, ears and mouth were filled with and garbage, and when I touched him, I found he was dead," he was quoted as saying.

Villagers staged sit-ins over the weekend and blocked major roads leading to Ning'an to protest the inefficiency of the rescue operation and demand a full investigation, the Post said.It said many villagers had already found their children's bodies by the time the rescue teams had arrived.

China suffers widespread flooding and drought each year, causing huge loss of life. Recent heavy rains and floods left more than 200 people dead in southern China.