At least 20 people were killed and 19 were missing after heavy rains lashed Beijing and surrounding provinces, state media said on Tuesday afternoon, in downpours that have submerged roads and deluged neighbourhoods with mud.

Storm Doksuri, a former super typhoon, has swept northwards over China since Friday, when it hit southern Fujian province after scything through the Philippines.

Heavy rains began pummelling the city and surrounding areas from the weekend, with nearly the average rainfall for the entire month of July dumped on Beijing in just 40 hours.

On the banks of the Mentougou river, one of the worst affected areas, muddy debris was strewn across the road. One man said he had not seen flooding this bad since July 2012, when 79 people were killed and tens of thousands evacuated.

"This time it's much bigger than that," he told AFP news agency, declining to give his name.

"It's a natural disaster, there's nothing you can do," a 20-year-old man surnamed Qi, who was waiting for a taxi with his grandmother outside a hospital, said. "[We] still have to work hard and rebuild."

Earlier on Tuesday, a military unit of 26 soldiers and four helicopters launched an "airdrop rescue mission" to deliver hundreds of food packages and ponchos to people stranded in and around a train station in Mentougou district, broadcaster CCTV reported.

"On July 31, areas in Beijing including Fangshan and Mentougou suffered serious damage from water, causing 3 trains to get trapped on their routes, and road traffic in some areas was completely cut off," CCTV reported.

The broadcaster was running live images on Tuesday morning of a row of buses half submerged in floodwater in Beijing's southwest Fangshan neighbourhood.

Around 150,000 households in Mentougou had no running water, the newspaper, Beijing Daily, said on Tuesday, with 45 water tankers dispatched to offer emergency supplies.

Other media on Monday published footage of chaotic scenes on high-speed rail trains stranded on tracks for as long as 30 hours, with passengers complaining that they had run out of food and water.

The country is already preparing for the arrival of another typhoon – Khanun, the sixth such storm of the year – as it nears China's east coast. (AFP)
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Last updated: 2023-08-01 HKT 17:45