Two students are missing after schools were flooded in a severe storm in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Tuesday, the local government said Wednesday.

The students were from Xingbin District in Laibin City, a city government spokesman said. He did not reveal the names of the students or their school.

He said local government officials and residents were still searching for them.

Laibin City was battered by heavy rain Monday night and Tuesday. The city center, the worst-hit by the rainstorm, received 439 mm of rainfall, an all-time high.

Sixty-five schools were flooded in total. At the city's Experimental High School, 1,050 students and teachers were stranded for hours before they were evacuated by the fire service Tuesday.

"I woke up at 3:00 AM and saw the room was flooded," said Wei Yanting, a girl who lived in a first-floor dormitory. "We all climbed onto the top bunk beds and sat there watching the water cover the lower ones."

At daybreak, the students were relocated to the classroom building, a higher and safer place to wait to be rescued, said school principal Shi Fang.

Firemen evacuated the students with yachts and rowboats in the waist-deep water. All were evacuated by 5:00 PM Tuesday.

The flood water in Laibin's city center was still knee-deep Wednesday and flooded vehicles were seen on every street.

City authorities said it would take another day to drain the water.

Across Guangxi, the rainstorms had caused floods in 12 counties of six cities as of Tuesday night, damaging the properties of more than 1.17 million people.

The rain disaster damaged 2,273 homes and 78,000 hectares of crops, according to Guangxi's Civil Affairs Department.

(Xinhua News Agency June 2, 2010)