As of 8:00 p.m. Friday, the water level of the swollen Weihe River has dropped about 1.59 meters over the past four days, but Huaxian County of northwest China's Shaanxi Province remained under flood threat, local officials said Friday.

The water flow of the river is about 800 cubic meters per second, much lower than the warning water flow of 2,000 cubic meters per second, but waters continued to pour into the low-lying outskirts of Huaxian through the breaches in the embankments, said Jia Zhibang, governor of Shaanxi.

A serious breach occurred in the embankment of the Weihe River Tuesday night and relief teams and troops were still stationed at the dykes and embankments to prevent the breaches from expanding.

Jia said emergency teams had begun to block the breaches with huge baskets of stones and rocks.

(Xinhua News Agency September 6, 2003)