Memorial commemorates NE China's mounting flood victims

A volunteer mourns for flood victims, whose T-shirt printed with words "come on ! Qingyuan", during a memorial service in Qingyuan county, Fushun, Northeast China's Liaoning province, Aug 24, 2013. [Photo/Xinhua]

Northeast China's Fushun City held a memorial service for local flood victims on Saturday as the death toll to the natural disaster rose by 13 to 76.

Another 88 people remained missing as of Friday, about a week after Fushun in Liaoning Province was ravaged by flooding described as the worst in decades by mayor Luan Qingwei at the mourning ceremony.

Wearing white flowers on their breasts, some 200 soldiers, paramilitary officers, medical staff and volunteers attended the main memorial ceremony in the worst-hit Nankouqian Township of Qingyuan Manchu Autonomous County.

As a siren wailed at 9 a.m., all the mourners stood in silence, pedestrians approaching the township stood in place to pay their respects to the flood victims, and vehicles stopped and blared their horns.

After the memorial ceremony ended, rescue crews immediately returned to the disaster sites to continue their rescue and search efforts.

Memorial services were also held in seven other counties and districts of Fushun, where torrential rains wreaked havoc on Aug. 16, when Nankouqian Township received rainfall of 449 mm.