Twenty one people, 19 of them children, may have died in central Vietnam in two boat accidents, officials and state media said yesterday. A boat went down early on Saturday while ferrying children to their morning class in Nghe An province, and 19 children aboard might have drowned, a district policeman said.

?The water current was strong and we fear all of the missing children may have died,? he said by telephone from Con Cuong district, more than 400 km (250 miles) south of Hanoi. A government report on yesterday said rescuers had retrieved two bodies.

Floods rose and receded quickly on Friday after torrential rain, having submerged more than 100 houses near a river in Dak Nong, the newspaper has reported. There were no reports of damages on the coffee crop.

Dak Nong lies in Vietnam?s key coffee-growing region which was skirted by Typhoon Xangsane after it slammed into the central coastal region last Sunday. Traders say flash floods would cause little harm to coffee trees which are grown high on hillsides.

But Nghe An was one of nine provinces hit by Typhoon Xangsane before it moved to Laos and dissipated in Thailand.