Tiny hand prints illustrate China school flood horror

BEIJING, Tuesday (Reuters) A Chinese teacher who saved more than 20 children from floods was hailed a hero on Tuesday, days after as many as perhaps 200 people, most of them pupils sitting at their desks, were killed.

State media showed pictures of the inundated school in northeastern Heilongjiang province and diagrams of how some children struggled at windows amid floating books and bits of paper to escape water two metres (six and a half feet) deep.

A photograph on the front page of the Beijing News showed small, muddy hand prints slipping below the water line on a classroom wall in the sprawling, one-storey building.

Sha Xianjing, who teaches Chinese, had the presence of mind to guide more than 20 of her pupils, aged about 10, to safety, the China Youth Daily reported.

Pushing the classroom door closed to stop water flooding in, Sha yelled for everyone to stand on their desks.

"Those near windows stand on the window sills. Those in the middle hold on to anything you can. Don't move! ... Don't be afraid! Hang on tight!" the China Daily quoted her as saying. Sha broke the classroom windows with her elbows and swept away the broken glass with bleeding hands so that the children had something to hold on to.

Throughout the ordeal, she implored the children not to cry.