A dozen people died in a flooded subway line in Zhengzhou, the capital of China's central Henan province, after the city was drenched by what weather watchers said were the heaviest rains for 1,000 years, Reuters reported. Video posted on social media late on Tuesday showed commuters chest-deep in murky floodwaters on a train in the dark, and an underground station turned into a large, churning pool. More 500 people were pulled to safety from the subway flood, Zhengshou city authorities said. Due to the rain, authorities in the city of 12 million people about 650 km (400 miles) southwest of Beijing, had halted bus services, said a Zhengzhou resident surnamed Guo, who spent the night at his office Amid torrential rains since last weekend, the death toll rose to at least 16 on Wednesday with four residents of Gongyi reported dead, according to local media. The city - located by the banks of the Yellow River, like Zhengzhou - has suffered widespread collapse of homes and structures due to the rains. More rain is forecast across Henan for the next three days, and the People's Liberation Army has dispatched more than 3,000 soldiers and personnel to help with search and rescue. From Saturday to Tuesday, 617.1 millimetres (mm) of rain fell in Zhengzhou. That's almost equal to Zhengzhou's annual average of 640.8 mm. The rainfall in Zhengzhou over the three days was on a level seen only "once in a thousand years", local meteorologists said.
