China's flood-hit Sichuan province faced threats from disease today while recovering from the worst flooding in a century.
Villages downstream on the Yangtze River are braced for deluges after floods that have already killed 161 people.
Water levels were expected to peak by tomorrow in the reservoir of the massive Three Gorges Dam in Hubei province.
Police and People's Liberation Army soldiers were bringing relief to 6,000 stranded residents of Dazhou city in Sichuan province and other areas trying to recover from the disaster.
Most of the deaths in Sichuan province and Chongqing municipality to the east were caused by landslides, fast-moving mud-and-rock flows and flash floods sweeping through mountain valleys from Thursday to Monday, Xinhua news agency said.
The Sichuan provincial disaster relief office said it had confirmed 89 people dead and 41 missing. In Kaixian county alone, the hardest-hit area of Chongqing, the death toll had jumped to 72, 23 missing and more than 2,300 injured.
Rains that pounded Dazhou for nearly a week had ended, but roads in the area were blocked by debris, officials said.