Vietnam flood kills 56

Millions of farmers living along the Mekong have to learn how to live and work with floods

HANOI, Vietnam (Reuters) -- Rescuers in Vietnam have recovered the bodies of seven people, five of them children, pushing the death toll in floods in the south of the country since late last month to 56.

Most of the deaths have been in five flood-hit provinces in the low-lying Mekong Delta rice-growing region, where 44 people have drowned, nearly all children. Ten people died last month in the coffee growing provinces of Daklak and Lam Dong.

Disaster management officials said 55,000 people have been evacuated from flood-hit homes and 138,000 still needed to be moved. They said about 215,000 people were in need of food aid.

While water levels have more or less stabilized in the Delta, an official at the weather station in An Giang province bordering Cambodia said it would be at least another six weeks before the flood danger eased.

Good sign

"The weather situation could still get complicated with storms, heavy rain or low pressure," he said.

A good sign was that water levels had stabilized in upstream parts of the Mekong River in Laos, he said.

The Mekong Delta is hit by annual floods of varying severity, but last year suffered a major catastrophe, with more than 400 people, most of them children, killed in the worst flooding in 40 years.

Official media said the floods prevented about 100,000 children starting their new school year on Wednesday.

Better prepared

Officials say the Delta is better prepared this year after a crash program of dyke building and irrigation, as well as public awareness campaigns aimed at cutting child casualties.

Crop damage has been negligible, given that the summer-autumn rice crop was almost complete when the floods hit. Damage to coffee plantations has also been minimal.

Weather reports said a tropical low pressure that developed in the South China Sea on Tuesday had moved some 50 kilometers (31 miles) west towards Vietnam's far northeastern coast by late Wednesday and was some 150 kilometers (93 miles) offshore.

The system is forecast to stay almost static in the next 24 hours but brought torrential rains to the coastal province of Quang Ninh on Thursday.

Reuters contributed to this report.