Up to 5,000 protesters attacked the civil affairs bureau in Shaanxi province's Hua county on September 4 and 5, breaking windows, overturning cars and stealing relief supplies, sources in the provincial capital of Xian told

"You can call it a riot or whatever, but these people were protesting a lack of government aid in response to the floods," a source who had been to Hua county in recent days told AFP.

"You can't believe what the government says, they say they supplied relief supplies, but actually they didn't," he said on condition of anonymity.

Up to 30 people were arrested, he said, including a man named Bao Wa whom police had fingered as the ringleader of the protests.

Hundreds of protesters also blocked the Xian-Tongguan highway for some four hours on September 5, he said.

Torrential rains in late August brought flooding to the southern portion of the province along the Wei River, a major tributary of the Yellow River, China's second longest.

The flooding was the worst in the region in 20 years, affecting 4.9 million people, destroying some 46,000 homes in up to 100 villages and causing direct economic losses of 4.0 billion yuan (481 million dollars), state press reports said last week.

A total of 430,000 people had been evacuated, with 180,000 relocated from the Wei river valley, many from the Hua county region of the river, the reports said.

"On September 4, this incident did occur," a Hua county government official named Ye told AFP by phone.

"There were a lot of people protesting, I don't know exactly how many, but a lot of people were here," she said.

Before the flooding the villagers had been told to evacuate their homes and go to government relief points. But some people in Hua country refused to go until after the flooding became severe, the official said.

"The province distributed relief supplies to the townships and the townships were responsible for distributing the supplies to relief points. Since these people did not go to the relief points, they didn't have any food or supplies," she said.

She refused to confirm how many people had been arrested during the incident, as did local officials at the public security bureau.

"As to who was arrested, that is difficult for the public security bureau to say at this moment," a police official said.

Northern China has been stricken by drought for successive years, with this year's rains and flooding taking the province by surprise, she said.

TERRA.WIRE