Dikes Blasted in China as Floods Kill 3rd GI in S. Korea

BEIJING —  After ordering tens of thousands of residents to abandon their homes, engineers dynamited levees along a stretch of the swollen Yangtze River on Sunday to ease flood waters in central China.

The dynamiting in Hubei province is the latest effort to relieve pressure on the bulging Yangtze, which has crested four times in what has been an especially deadly flood season.

Soldiers and residents of riverside communities have kept round-the-clock vigils on dikes for weeks, filling cracks above and below the water line.

In South Korea, torrential rain subsided after a four-day deluge that left 165 people dead, including three U.S. soldiers. An additional 69 people, all South Koreans, are missing and presumed dead.

The latest casualties included an American soldier who died Sunday, apparently after falling into a flooded ditch at Suwon air base south of Seoul, according to the U.S. military command.

The soldier, whose name was not immediately released, was from the 143rd Air Defense Artillery Battalion assigned to the air base.

The two U.S. Army soldiers who died Saturday were identified as Staff Sgt. Jennifer T. Warner, 35, of Tullahoma, Tenn., and Spc. Thomas D. Patterson, 27, of Indianapolis, who were assigned to the 304th Signal Battalion of the 8th Army’s 1st Signal Brigade. They died when a mudslide hit their unit’s field site south of Seoul, the military command said.