The three died as the worst floods since 1964 hit the upper reaches of the Minjiang River in Sichuan province, local officials were quoted as saying by the Xinhua news agency.

Heavy downpours also battered northwest China's Shaanxi province, causing water volume on some stretches of the Hanjiang river, a branch of the Yangtze river, to increase dramatically.

The rainstorm is the largest so far this season in Shaanxi, and 84 counties within the province were affected with stretches of a national highway collapsing.

Power supply and telecommunications services were also hit and more wild weather is forecast, Xinhua said.

Dykes meanwhile were torn open in the Dujiatai area of Hubei province which is one of the Yangtze's major flood diversion areas near Wuhan city.

According to Wuhan authorities, water levels climbed to 26.77 metersfeet) Wednesday, 0.07 meters higher than the previous record set in 1998.

More than 1,000 residents have been relocated, but no casualties have been reported. Thousands of hectares of farmland were wiped out inflicting millions of dollars in economic losses.

The Wuhan municipal flood control headquarters said the water level of the Yangtze has dropped somewhat but the threat was not over.

There was some respite however along the swollen Huai river in eastern Jiangsu province where the water level of Hongze Lake on the lower reaches of the Huai has been dropping steadily over the past two days, the provincial flood control headquarters said, Xinhua reported.

It follows a week of record-high waters that prompted authorities to relocate more than a million people as dikes were blown up to divert water away from heavily populated areas.

The official death toll from flooding this year stood at 569 as of July 11, but more than 100 people have since been reported dead or missing, mostly in landslides in the Yangtze river basin.

Authorities Thursday said there had been some 500 geological disasters, mostly mud and rock slides, so far this year triggered by pounding rain.

At least 250 people have been killed or injured, according to the China Daily.

Jiang Jianjun, director of the Environment Department of the Ministry of Land and Resources, said the death toll would inevitably rise.

He said the ministry intends to step up efforts to prevent and better respond to geological disasters "with engineering techniques".

"Using engineering techniques to fix dangerous rocks has proved effective," he said.

"Otherwise, many areas such as the Three Gorges Dam area would have suffered more serious geological disasters against the backdrop of this year's excessive rainfall."

The State Council, China's cabinet, Wednesday issued a ciruclar demanding government departments join forces to prevent so many disasters and put the onus on local authorities to take care of those affected.

Since 1991, China has averaged 3,750 deaths annually due to floods.

TERRA.WIRE