SHANGHAI, China – Lightning strikes and mud flows sparked by record-breaking torrential rains have killed at least 37 people in western China, state media reported Wednesday.

Water levels on the Yangtze River’s midsection were at dangerous levels, prompting warnings, with more rain forecast upstream in coming days, reports said.

Mudslides left 32 people dead, five missing and 128 injured on the outskirts of Chongqing city, where 10.5 inches of rain fell between Monday night and Tuesday afternoon _ the largest volume since records began in 1892, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Landslides and lightning killed five others in neighboring Sichuan province, it said.

Traffic was gridlocked on the narrow streets of the hilly city that spans the Yangtze, 1,000 miles west of where the river flows into the Pacific Ocean near Shanghai. Rain continued to fall on the city Wednesday and photos showed cars and buses mired in floodwaters up to their windshields.

Floods, a perennial problem in China, have killed more than 233 people and destroyed more than 118,000 homes so far this year, according to the national flood control office. Millions of people in central and southern China live on reclaimed farmland in the flood plains of rivers.

A service of the Associated Press(AP)