Hanoi hit by floods

VIETNAM: Heavy rains after weeks of drought turned the streets of Vietnamese capital Hanoi Tuesday into rivers up to half a metre deep.

A heavy downpour that lasted for more than two hours forced motorbike commuters to push their machines through the dirty water and trees were down.

Police said on state radio that scores of locations in the city of several million people were flooded or snarled by traffic jams.

A meteorologist said the city centre was hardest hit, with about 120 millimetres (4.7 inches) of rain falling in the rush-hour period. Hanoi had been suffering for weeks from a drought which meteorologists said was the worst in decades.

It worsened power shortages and led to blackouts in the country, which gets more than one-third of its electricity from hydropower. Hanoi, AFP