By Rashid Razaq
The Evening Standard
SHIAO LIN, Taiwan — Taiwanese military rescue operations have saved 260 people from a remote mountain village after a massive mudslide.
But at least 400 people are still unaccounted for in Shiao Lin in the wake of Typhoon Morakot.
A rescued villager, Lin Chien-chung, said he believed as many as 600 people were buried in the mudslide.
“The mudslide covered a large part of the village including a primary school and many homes,” Lin was quoted as saying. “A part of the mountain above us just fell on the village.” Another unidentified man told police his family of 10 were dead: “They’re gone. All gone.”
Lin said he and several neighbours survived because they moved to higher ground several hours before the mudslide hit after torrential rain had flooded their homes.
The south-western village, which has an official population of 1,300, is among the worst affected places in the country after Sunday’s disaster.
Helicopters were dropping food and taking survivors from the village, where roads have been washed away and power and water supplies cut. The official death toll in Taiwan so far is 41, but that does not include anyone in Shiao Lin ‹ and hundreds of others are also feared dead in China following landslides which have toppled apartment buildings and buried villages.
In eastern China rescuers were searching for survivors in the rubble of six apartment blocks that collapsed yesterday. Six people have so far been found alive in the town of Pengxi in Zhejiang province.
Officials said there were an unknown number of residents in the four-storey buildings, which were thought to house 28 families each.
More than a million people have been evacuated from their homes and six deaths have been reported in China.
State news agency Xinhua said hundreds of villages and towns had been flooded and more than 2,000 houses and other buildings had collapsed. The typhoon has now weakened to a tropical storm, but it has still been lashing south-eastern China with heavy rain.
Before reaching the mainland, Morakot dropped 80 inches of rain on Taiwan over the weekend.
Before striking Taiwan, the storm hit the Philippines, where it killed 22.
In Japan, Typhoon Etau, with winds of up to 67 mph, has set off flash floods and landslides that have killed at least 12 people.
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