According to the ministry, 71 people have died and 13 are missing from torrential rains that have battered the region since June 6.
BEIJING: The death toll from nearly a week of heavy rain in southern China rose to 71 on Tuesday, as reports emerged of authorities deliberately flooding some villages in an effort to save bigger cities.
More than 10.6 million people have been affected by the disaster, which has caused an estimated 447 million dollars in economic losses, the civil affairs ministry reported on its website.
According to the ministry, 71 people have died and 13 are missing from torrential rains that have battered the region since June 6. The death toll on Monday had stood at 66.
Guangdong province has been the worst hit and authorities have deliberately diverted water to flood six villages so that more important towns and cities would not be inundated, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Ten thousand people were safely evacuated from the six villages, Xinhua said, citing local officials.
The unavoidable flooding of villages occurred when authorities opened sluice gates at a dam on Guangdong's Hanjiang river because water there was building up to too high a level, according to Xinhua.
"Landslides and collapses have been frequent along the river dam area," Guo Chunshan, the chief of Liuhuang town which encompasses the six villages, was quoted as saying.
"If we hadn't opened the discharge gate, the dam might have overflowed and the losses would have been much more serious," he added.
According to the ministry, 643,000 people have been evacuated from the six regions and provinces affected by the flooding -- Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hunan, Fujian and Jiangxi.
More than 3.5 million hectares of farmland have been damaged and 56,000 houses destroyed, it said.
The week of devastating rains has marked the start of the months-long storm season for southern and eastern China, although it has begun later than last year.
From April to August last year, natural disasters killed more than 2,200 people in China, with most deaths in the typhoon and flood-prone regions in the south and east, according to previously released government data.
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