At least 14 people were confirmed dead when a swelling river flooded a colliery in central China's Hunan Province Saturday, bringing the country's death toll of the tropical storm Bilis to 170.

Among the 14 dead were a miner on duty, seven technicians who were in the pit for emergency rescue operations, as well as six workers who were trapped in collapsed houses and flooded pump rooms, said the emergency rescue headquarters at the Shenjiawan Colliery of the Hongwei Mining Co in Hengyang, central-south China's Hunan Province, on Monday.

Continuous rainstorm caused by the tropical storm Bilis that landed in China on Friday, sweeping away houses and set off mudslides.

Chinese soldiers rescue people in flood in Shaoguan, South China's Guangdong Province, July 16, 2006. [Fang Qianhua/Southern Daily]

More heavy rains were forecast in Guangdong province, a major economic center that borders Hong Kong, after Bilis flooded farmland, washed out roads and railway lines and cut power supplies, television and newspaper reports said.

Hunan is the worst hit province by Bilis as 92 people have been confirmed dead and more than 100 missing, according to the Xinhua News Agency. Some 43 people were killed in coastal Fujian province, 33 in Guangdong and two in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

State television said Jiangxi and Zhejiang provinces also suffered fatalities, but didn't give details.

Bilis weakened as it moved inland during the weekend, but the death toll climbed steadily as police and soldiers waded through flooded streets and used boats to reach thousands of people stranded by high water.

In Fujian, a landslide killed 10 people and a second left another 10 missing and feared dead in the city of Zhangzhou, state television said.

The government evacuated more than 250,000 fishermen and others from coastal areas before the storm hit, and thousands more were forced to flee their homes as waters rose.

A woman stands amid wrekages after Typhoon Bilis sweeps across Ping He county, east China's Fujian province July 16, 2006.  [Newsphoto]

In Lechang, a city in Guangdong, authorities evacuated 1,663 inmates from a prison as waters rose to 3 meters (10 feet) high in some areas, earlier reports said.

Part of China's main north-south railway line was reportedly submerged, delaying thousands of travelers. State media said a 10,000-member repair crew was dispatched to fix the damage.

A front-page photo in the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper showed train cars submerged nearly to their windows at the Lechang train station.

Also in Lechang, residents standing knee-deep in flooded downtown streets used nets to catch fish that were swept in from a nearby river.

Earlier reports said 349 people had been hurt in Hunan and 12,000 stranded, while 31,400 houses had collapsed and 36,630 hectares (91,200 acres) of crops had been ruined.

Vehicles make their way on a flooded street in Fuzhou, China's Fujian province, July 16, 2006. [Newsphoto]

Losses in the neighboring coastal provinces of Zhejiang and Fujian were estimated at 1.1 billion yuan (US$140 million), Xinhua said.

It didn't give figures for Hunan or Guangdong, a center for China's export-driven manufacturing industries.

Typhoons hit China every year in the summer, causing hundreds of deaths.

The country expects to suffer from more storms than usual this year due to an unusually warm current off its Pacific coast and high temperatures on the Tibetan plateau.