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An operation began on Saturday to drain water from a dangerously swollen "quake lake" that threatened to flood the homes of 1.3 million people in southwest China, state media said.
Water poured through a hurriedly-dug drainage channel, releasing pressure from the lake which had built up behind a dam caused by landslides in the huge earthquake on May 12, Xinhua news agency reported.
Soldiers and police carved the channel to stop the lake from bursting its banks and emptying 220 million cubic metres (700 million cubic feet) of water downstream.
Drainage had been scheduled to begin late Friday when the rising waters of the lake reached the sluice channel.
But officials heightened the dam by just over half a metre (two feet) to delay the plan for a few crucial hours to allow workers on emergency construction sites in the potential flood zone to evacuate.
The lake has become one of the most pressing issues in the aftermath of the earthquake disaster in mountainous Sichuan province, which killed more than 69,000 people and left millions homeless.
The 8.0 magnitude quake triggered massive landslides which blocked rivers and created more than 30 unstable "quake lakes" threatening millions of people.
But the Tangjiashan quake lake on the Jianjiang river just a few kilometres (miles) north of here has been considered the most dangerous.
Up to 1.3 million people were deemed to be in danger if the vast piles of rock and debris that have blocked the river for the past month burst open, officials had warned.
Earlier on Saturday Xinhua said that heavy rainfall meant the lake had reached a "critical point" and needed to be drained to avert disaster.
More than 250,000 people had already been evacuated from the downstream area but many others would have to be moved out if the dam collapsed due to the pressure of the water, it said.
At least 600 soldiers and police worked on the channel for the past week and 100 more were airlifted to the dam on Friday to speed up preparations as forecasts predicted heavy rain this weekend, Xinhua said.
On Saturday they were widening the flood channel as water began to flow through it.
Concern about flooding spread to China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), which said the bursting of the lake could put the country's longest oil pipeline at risk.
The Lanzhou-Chengdu-Chongqing pipeline is 60 kilometres (37.5 miles) downstream from the landslide-created Tangjiashan lake, CNPC said in a statement on its website.
Oil supplies to the disaster-hit zone and neighbouring provinces risk being cut off if the pipeline is damaged and cannot be repaired within three days, CNPC added.
Meanwhile anger grew in the region over poor construction of schools that collapsed during the quake, leaving many children among the dead and injured.
Parents have held unprecedented protests over the issue, blaming official corruption for shoddily-constructed school buildings that collapsed when the quake hit.
Chinese police on Friday restricted the movements of foreign journalists in the earthquake zone, the latest sign that initial openness on covering last month's disaster was ending.
Two AFP journalists were barred entry to the town of Wufu, where parents have protested the collapse of a school, while other western journalists said they were harassed and detained by police for their reporting activities.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Soldiers fix propaganda banners at a refugee camp in Sichuan
AFP
