Over 80,000 people flee severe flooding

Rainstorms pummel southwest provinces

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Flooding in China's southwest has driven more than 80,000 people from their homes, state media said yesterday, as a collapsed bridge forced the dramatic rescue of a truck driver left dangling over the edge.

China is enduring a summer of extreme weather, with heat waves scorching wide swaths of the country while rainstorms pummel other regions.

Around 80,900 people had been evacuated by Tuesday afternoon in the southwestern province of Guizhou, state news agency Xinhua reported.

In Rongjiang county a football field was "submerged under three metres of water", the news agency said.

Footage from state broadcaster CCTV showed severe flooding has inundated villages and collapsed a bridge in one mountainous area of the province.