China’s death toll from tropical storm Bilis rose yesterday to at least 164, with 138 people missing, as torrential rains swept away houses and set off mudslides, state television reported.

More heavy rains were forecast in Guangdong province, a major economic center that borders Hong Kong, after Bilis flooded farmland, washed out roads and railway lines and cut power supplies, television and newspaper reports said.

Hardest-hit was the inland province of Hunan, where at least 78 people were killed after Bilis roared ashore Friday, according to newspapers and the official Xinhua News Agency. They said 43 people were killed in coastal Fujian province and 33 in Guangdong. State television said Jiangxi, Guangxi and Zhejiang provinces also suffered fatalities, but didn’t give details.

Bilis weakened as it moved inland during the weekend, but the death toll climbed steadily as police and soldiers waded through flooded streets and used boats to reach thousands of people stranded by high water.

In Fujian, a landslide killed 10 people and a second left another 10 missing and feared dead in the city of Zhangzhou, the China Daily newspaper said, citing state television. The newspaper and other media haven’t given details of how other deaths occurred.

The government evacuated more than 250,000 fishermen and others from coastal areas before the storm hit, and thousands more were forced to flee their homes as waters rose. In Lechang, a city in Guangdong, authorities evacuated 1,663 inmates from a prison as waters rose to 3 meters (10 feet) high in some areas, earlier reports said.

Part of China’s main north-south railway line was reportedly submerged, delaying thousands of travelers. State media said a 10,000-member repair crew was dispatched to fix the damage.

A front-page photo in the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper showed train cars submerged nearly to their windows at the Lechang train station.

Also in Lechang, residents standing knee-deep in flooded downtown streets used nets to catch fish that were swept in from a nearby river. Earlier reports said 349 people had been hurt in Hunan and 12,000 stranded, while 31,400 houses had collapsed and 36,630 hectares (91,200 acres) of crops had been ruined.

Losses in the neighboring coastal provinces of Zhejiang and Fujian were estimated at 1.1 billion yuan (US$140 million; euro110 million), Xinhua said.

It didn’t give figures for Hunan or Guangdong, a center for China’s export-driven manufacturing industries.

Typhoons hit China every year in the summer, causing hundreds of deaths.The country expects to suffer from more storms than usual this year due to an unusually warm current off its Pacific coast and high temperatures on the Tibetan plateau.

<B>Blast and flood in China coal mines kill 64</B>

An explosion in one mine and flooding in another killed 64 workers and left seven missing in the latest disasters to strike China’s mining industry, state media reported yesterday.

The blast killed at least 50 workers in the Linjiazhuang Coal Mine in Jinzhong, a city in Shanxi province, China’s main coal-producing region. Six escaped, and another who was rescued was suffering from carbon-monoxide poisoning, the official “Xinhua” News Agency reported. Seven others were missing, “China Central” Television said.

Investigators blamed the blast on airborne coal dust that caught fire, “Xinhua” reported. “CCTV” said the mine manager was in police custody.

Also, the rain-swollen Leishui River in Hunan province overflowed, killing one miner who was on duty and seven technicians who were in a pit at the Shenjiawen Colliery, “Xinhua” said.

Another six workers died after “being trapped in collapsed houses and flooded pump rooms,” the news agency said. Rescuers had to give up their efforts Sunday after the torrential flooding filled the entire pit.

China’s coal mines are the world’s deadliest, with more than 5,000 deaths every year in explosions, fires and other disasters.

Last month, a flood in another coal mine in Shanxi killed 56 miners.