China earthquake area threatened by flooding

DONGHEKOU, China -- Two rivers blocked by landslides threatened to flood towns hit by China's massive earthquake, sending thousands of survivors fleeing Saturday in a region still struggling with the country's worst disaster in 30 years.

A mountain sheared off by the tremor cut the Qingzhu river and swallowed the riverside village of Donghekou whole, entombing an unknown number of people inside a huge mound of earth.

Compounding the problem, a lake rising behind the wall of debris threatens to break its banks and send torrents cascading into villages downstream.

Residents streamed out of the county on the northern edge of the quake zone, spurred on by mobile phone text messages sent en masse by local government officials warning that the water level was rising and people downstream were being evacuated.

In the town of Beichuan, 60 miles to the south, thousands fled as the reports circulated.

Rescue work resumed later in the day and experts were monitoring the river above Beichuan, the People's Daily newspaper said on its Web site.

A strong aftershock -- the second in two days and measured by the U.S. Geological Survey at magnitude 5.7 -- shook the area early Sunday for 45 seconds, causing people to run into the streets.

In all the devastation wrought by the quake, little looks as bleak as Donghekou.

The road to the village ends in a tangled twist of metal and tar. In the small valley below, the village itself has disappeared when the mountain collapsed. Locals said two other villages further upstream, Ciban and Kangle, had suffered the same fate. The three villages were home to about 300 families, locals said.

The government's daily update added another few thousand bodies to the death toll as it continued climbing toward an expected final tally of at least 50,000. Cabinet spokesman Guo Weimin said 28,881 deaths have been confirmed so far.

The official Xinhua News Agency, citing regional officials, said more than 10,600 people were known to be still buried.