A newspaper photographer disappeared on Tuesday when he was covering the flooding in eastern Shaanxi, an inland province in Northwest China.

Wang Wen, a 36-year-old photographer for the newspaper Weinan Daily, fell into the water as his boat overturned on Tuesday morning when the third flood crest on the Weihe River passed the Huaxian Hydrometric Station and broke part of the embankment of the Luowen River, a tributary of the Weihe, according to the Weinan Flood-Prevention Office.

The office said the other 13 people in the same boat also fell into the water, including Liu Xinwen, the secretary of the Communist Party's Weinan committee; Cao Lili, the city's mayor; and Yang Zhaomin, the commander of Weinan Military District.

Those 13 were rescued from the water one after another that morning some 1.5 kilometres from where the boat overturned, but Wang was still missing yesterday, the office said.

The third flood crest on the Weihe River, the largest tributary of the Yellow River, was not so serious as the first two but it also caused damage. When it broke part of its tributary's embankment, this threatened some 200 farmers, who were moved to safe places early on Tuesday, the office said.

It added: "The flooding deposited more than 300 million cubic metres of water in low-lying places of Weinan, which made more than 200,000 local people homeless."

Since August 24, most parts of Shaanxi have been hit by continuous heavy rain, which has caused serious flooding and landslides and loss of life and property.

The provincial government has since allocated 40.8 million yuan (US$4.92 million) in aid to help disaster-stricken people and the flood-hit areas that need materials for reconstruction, said the Shaanxi Provincial Flood-Prevention Headquarters.

(China Daily September 11, 2003)