Emergency workers discovered that more than 7,000 chemical buckets had been washed into a major river in northeast China, thousands more than Wednesday's initial findings, authorities said Thursday.

But only 3,000 buckets contained chemicals, about 170 km each, and the other 4,000 buckets were empty, government officials told a press conference Thursday morning held in Jilin City, Jilin Province.

The buckets were swept into the Songhuajiang River from a plant in Jilin City in floods triggered by days of heavy rain. About 400 buckets had been recovered.

(Xinhua News Agency July 29, 2010)