A LANDSLIDE early yesterday left at least 22 soldiers missing in Vietnam’s central province of Quang Tri, the Vietnamese Government said, as the Southeast Asian country battles the worst flooding in years. Intense rains since early October have caused floods and mudslides that have killed at least 64 people in central Vietnam, with more heavy rainfall expected over the next few days. The landslide hit the barracks of a unit of Military Region 4 of the Vietnam People’s Army, the government said in a statement on its website, days after another landslide killed 13 people, mostly soldiers, in the neighboring province of Thua Thien Hue. One of the victims is Major General Nguyen Van Man, deputy commander of the Military Region 4 of the Vietnam People’s Army. “We had another sleepless night,” a visibly emotional Phan Van Giang, Vietnam’s deputy defense minister, told reporters yesterday. State media reports said yesterday water at rivers in Quang Tri province rose to the highest levels in more than 20 years. In Thua Thien Hue province, rescuers continued to battle driving rain as they searched for at least 15 construction workers missing and feared dead after a landslide at the start of the week in a mountainous area. Heavy rain of up to 600 millimeters will continue in parts of central Vietnam until Wednesday, Vietnam’s weather agency said yesterday. Almost a million people have been affected by the downpours and more than 200,000 homes flooded.(SD-Agencies) |