This is the terrifying moment a passenger boat capsized after it clashed with a restaurant boat during a rescue operation on the flooded Jialing River in southwest China's Chongqing municipality.
As torrential rain continues to lash Chinese provinces, authorities and volunteers have desperately worked to help the millions affected move to safer places and rescue stranded citizens.
But rescuers on the river bank could only watch as this boat, believed to be carrying staff and passengers, tipped over into the gushing river yesterday.
The Jialing river was recorded nearly seven meters (23 feet) above alert levels, and waters were expected to rise to their highest levels since record-keeping began in 1847, the Xinhua news agency said.
Nearly 1.7 million people have been forced to abandon their homes and dozens more have died in heavy flooding across large parts of China, the government reported.
The relentless rains have unleashed flooding across China and left at least 57 people dead, dozens of others missing and hundreds injured, while more than a million residents have been evacuated from their homes The China Post reported.
The unprecedented rains over the past week have deluged parts of northern, central and southwest China and rivers continue to swell, despite a break in the showers.
The torrential downpours, which began in September, have caused chaos around the streets of Nanjing in east China's Jiangsu province, with the city being pummeled by 36 days of constant rainfall, the lengthiet wet season for the past decade.
The wet weather also submerged parts of the Shanghai-Nanjing intercity railway on Monday.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs said: 'Constant strong rainfall has caused serious flood disasters in Sichuan (southwest), Shaanxi (north) and Henan (central China) — 12.3 million people were affected, 57 died and 29 are missing,' The China Post reported.
More than 120,000 houses have collapsed and economic losses from damaged houses, crops and land is estimated to have reached 17.27 billion yuan (£1.7 billion), it added.
Authorities have dispatched work teams to help with relief efforts, and plan to distribute thousands of tents, cots, blankets and clothing, the ministry said.
One area of the southwestern province of Sichuan, Bazhong, was severely affected, with 13 people left dead, 10 missing and 156 injured, a spokesman for the local government told the official China Daily newspaper.
Over the weekend, officials in Sichuan's Dazhou and Guangan regions ordered the evacuation of over 600,000 people as major tributaries to the Yangtze — China's longest river — exceeded danger levels.
