BEIJING, May 24, 2009 (AFP) - About 330,000 people in central China are to be evicted from their homes to make way for a reservoir that will form part of a massive water diversion project, state media said Sunday.

More than two-thirds of the people in Hubei and Henan provinces would be relocated to about 50 nearby counties and cities, the official Xinhua news agency quoted Zhang Jiyao, head of the project, as saying.

Zhang did not say where the remaining 100,000 would be placed to make way for the Danjiangkou Reservoir, part of the multi-billion-dollar North-South Water Diversion Project.

The project aims to bring water from the nation's longest river, the Yangtze, to the parched north of the country, which is plagued by droughts.

Xinhua has previously said that by 2010, when part of the project will have been completed, up to one billion cubic metres of water will be diverted to Beijing annually.

According to the project's website, the relocation of the 330,000 people is expected to be completed by the end of 2013.