BEIJING — Rescuers were searching Sunday for 17 missing students after a torrential flood hit a school in northeast China and swept 92 people to their deaths, the same day a fire in the country's south raced through the top floors of a hotel and killed 31.

Authorities in Beijing were struggling to handle the twin tragedies thousands of kilometres apart, trying to overcome faulty communications in the flood zone and vowing to dispatch an emergency team of investigators to the hotel fire.

The flash flood Friday slammed a school in Shalan, a remote town in China's far northeastern province of Heilongjiang, claiming the lives of 88 students and four villagers, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Sunday.

Another 25 people were hospitalized, it said.

Some 352 students -- all between six and 14 years old -- and 31 teachers were in the school when it was hit by a torrent of water from heavy rains gushing down a mountain, the agency said.

Telephone calls were not answered Sunday at the school or city government offices in Shalan.

Initial reports said 29 people were killed, and the death toll is likely to rise as authorities continue their search for 17 more missing students, Xinhua said. It said forklifts were cleaning out mud and silt while dozens of policemen were checking among the ruins for bodies.

State television showed vehicles slowly driving through flooded streets and rescue workers in orange jump suits working with shovels. Footage also showed medics carrying bodies out of the wreckage, while children breathed through respirators in a hospital.

Meanwhile in China's far south, a fire engulfed the top three floors of a hotel, killing 31 people, state media said.

The fire broke out at noon Friday at the Huanan Hotel in Shantou, a city in Guangdong province, and swept through the top stories of the four-storey building, the reports said.

Early dispatches said five people had died, but rescuers found more bodies when they entered the hotel after putting out the fire, Xinhua said.

Another 15 people were injured, four of them seriously, it said.

It wasn't clear how many people were in the hotel at the time of the blaze, which took three hours to extinguish.

Images on state television showed the neighbourhood shrouded in heavy grey smoke, and still photographs showed firefighters removing tanks of cooking gas from the hotel.