Torrential rains sparked fresh landslides and flash flooding in central Vietnam, killing three people and cutting the country's sole north-south railway, the official media reported Saturday.
The landslides in Khanh Hoa province Friday also wounded two people and brought the death toll from a week of flooding in the province to 17, the ruling communist party's mouthpiece Nhan Dan said.
Overnight rainfall of between 250 and 300 mm (between 10 and 12 inches) brought water levels on the Nha Trang and Phan Rang rivers well above danger point, the paper said.
The fresh flooding cut the trunk railway line between Hanoi and the commercial capital of Ho Chi Minh City, stranding 15 trains and 2,000 passengers, a rail official told AFP.
Engineers only managed to reopen the line Friday evening after enlisting the help of local residents to clear the landslips, the official said.
Earlier this week a train driver was killed in the province when a landslide derailed a north-south express. The passengers all escaped unharmed.
The latest floods in central Vietnam have now killed more than 30 people.
Earlier this year more than 400 people, most of them children and babies, were killed in the southern Mekong delta in the worst floods to hit the region in nearly 40 years -- HANOI (AFP)
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