The death toll from rain-triggered floods, landslides and mud flows across China has risen to at least 152 from last week alone. The bucketing rain and its natural-disaster fallout has affected millions of people.

President Hu Jintao visited the flood-ravaged southwestern city of Chonqqing yesterday, expressing condolences and promising to help the thousands of suffering people.

Since the start of the annual wet season in May, floods have hit nearly half of the nation's regions and killed at least 400 people. In Chongqing, 42 people died and 12 have been reported missing. Another 300,000 have been evacuated from their homes.

China Central Television last night showed Hu slogging through Chonqqing's flooded streets in galoshes and visiting weather-worn residents.

Hu chatted with an elderly man living in a drenched apartment, asking: "How high was the water? Are you having any problems getting enough food? Do you have all the things you need to cook your rice?"

During a speech in the city's flooded Shapingba District, Hu told residents that the Communist Party and government would do everything possible to care for them.

"You all have suffered," Hu told a crowd on the street. "This once-in-a-century rain disaster has destroyed your homes and washed away your belongings, causing significant losses. I am sad, as you are sad. We must have the determination and courage to overcome this."

More than 266 millimeters of rain fell between Monday night and Tuesday afternoon in Chongqing, the largest volume since records began in 1892.

Hu spent Saturday and yesterday in Chongqing, also visiting soldiers carrying out recovery work and local entrepreneurs, CCTV said.

Even harder hit last week was southern Yunnan Province, where rain triggered floods and landslides from Wednesday to Saturday. More than 4,000 houses were destroyed and 386,000 people evacuated.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs said 59 people were killed in Yunnan, many of them caught in mud flows on Thursday.

Rescuers yesterday retrieved two more bodies at the Xiaojiangping Dam, near the Sujiahekou hydropower station in Tengchong County of Yunnan, bringing the death toll from mud slides in the area just since Thursday to 29.

Eastern Shandong Province was badly hit, with 40 reported dead, nine missing and about 112,600 evacuated. The rain inflicted severe damage to transportation and telecommunications systems.

Jinan, Shandong's capital and the worst-hit city, received up to 118 millimeters of rain in an hour during a storm on Wednesday. Officials at the Shandong Department of Water Resources said the rainstorm was the worst since 1916, when Jinan began to record weather.

In western Xinjiang region, torrential rainfall caused 11 deaths and injured more than 100.