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A rescue worker near Beijing: storm and rain left destruction in their wake

Photo: Andy Wong / dpa

At least two people have died in floods caused by torrential rain in the Chinese capital Beijing. As reported by Chinese state television, the dead were discovered by rescue workers in a river in the outskirts of Mentougou, which was particularly affected by flooding.

Residents of the district as well as clearance teams took advantage of a slight calming of the weather in the afternoon to clear houses and streets of mud, branches and other washed up debris.

"I'm old, but I've never seen floods like this," Qin Quan, a resident of Mentougou, told AFP. She showed on her smartphone a video shared by her neighbors of a man desperately clinging to a pole with one hand as water washes over him.

Warning to the population

Other footage on social media showed brown mud floods sweeping cars away in the suburbs. In a video, rainwater floods a subway station in Beijing's university district.

The extreme rainfall, which is expected to continue until Tuesday, is a consequence of tropical storm Doksuri. The Beijing weather bureau had declared the highest severe weather warning level since Saturday evening and advised the population not to go outside. "Doksuri" had previously hit the Chinese coastal province of Fujian as a typhoon and had weakened into a tropical storm on its way inland.

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Already on Sunday, tens of thousands of residents from the particularly flood-prone districts of the capital had been brought to safety. A high warning level for heavy rain, which has been in force since the weekend for large parts of northern China, was renewed on Monday for the greater Beijing area and the neighboring province of Hebei.

The streets in the center were unusually quiet. In parts of Beijing, subways and buses had to temporarily suspend operations, dozens of flights were canceled, and well-known tourist attractions remained closed.

Heat records at the beginning of July

At the beginning of July, Beijing and its region had reported new heat records with temperatures of more than 40 degrees. According to experts, such weather extremes are increasing in frequency and intensity due to the man-made climate crisis.

"Doksuri" had previously swept across the Philippines and Taiwan, causing severe devastation there.

bbr/AFP/dpa