Dozens die in Taiwan mudslides

A mudslide touched off by a deadly typhoon buried a remote mountain village in Taiwan, leaving at least 400 people unaccounted for, while a massive landslide in China toppled seven apartment buildings, an official said today.

A mudslide touched off by a deadly typhoon buried a remote mountain village in Taiwan, leaving at least 140 people still unaccounted for, while a massive landslide in China toppled seven apartment buildings, an official said today.

TV stations said that Taiwan's military had rescued about 260 people from the mudslide in Shiao Lin.

Typhoon Morakot slammed Taiwan over the weekend with as much as 80 inches of rain before crossing the 112-mile-wide Taiwan Strait and hitting China.

The storm inflicted the worst flooding the island has seen in at least a half-century, submerging large areas of farmland in chocolate-brown muck and swamping city streets.

Taiwanese authorities put the confirmed death toll in Taiwan at 38, but that seemed certain to rise.

The country's Cabinet set aside US$600m (€423.4m) in emergency funds to help with relief work and to compensate victims' families.

A disaster appeared to be unfolding at the isolated southern village of Shiao Lin, hit by a mudslide on Sunday at about 6am local time - while many people were still asleep - and now cut off by land from the outside world.