Taiwan - typhoon

More than 700 people found alive

Article published on the 2009-08-12 Latest update 2009-08-12 10:06 TU

People loading military helicopters with supplies for Typhoon victims. Taiwan, 12 August 2009
(Photo: Reuters)

More than 700 people have been found alive in Taiwan villages that were flattened by a mudslide. The military have sent 25 helicopters to evacuate them from the battered island's south.

Media reports said that in the village of Hsiaolin alone around 600 people had been buried alive. But rescuers on Tuesday put the figure at 100.

Around 90 per cent of houses were buried in the area hit by the heavy mudslide.

Typhoon Morakot is one of  the worst typhoons to have hit Taiwan in the past 50 years.At the weekend it dumped a record three metres of rainfall on southern Taiwan.

Taiwan's army has mobilised 17,000 troups for the rescue operation.

So far the typhoon is known to have killed 66 people in Taiwan and eight in eastern China which it has now hit.

And the trial has taken place of a Chinese activist who exposed links between shoddy construction and school collapses in last year's Sichuan earthquake.

Lawyers for Tan Zuoren described the trial, for "inciting subversion of state power", as "terrible" and claimed that three witnesses were not allowed to attend.

The charges reportedly related to speeches about 1989's Tianamen Square repression of student demonstrations.