BEIJING — The toll from the already deadly Typhoon Morakot in the Pacific threatened to soar on Tuesday, as huge mudslides buried a rural village in south-central Taiwan and at least six apartment buildings in coastal China, leaving hundreds of people missing.
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Deadly Typhoons in AsiaPhotographs
Deadly Typhoons in Asia
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Unverified reports by residents suggested Monday that Hsiao-lin, a village in southern Taiwan, was buried in a mudslide, leaving as many as 600 people missing. More Photos »
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Reuters
An elderly man was carried after being rescued from Hsiao-lin. Typhoon Morakot has unleashed record rains on Taiwan. More Photos >
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A quake jolted eastern and central Japan early Tuesday. More Photos >
The Taiwan mudslide, triggered early Sunday by as much as eight feet of typhoon-spawned rain, was said by local residents to have buried as many as 600 people in the village of Hsiao-lin, but the figure could not be quickly verified.
In Pengxi, a mountain-ringed town in coastal China about 270 miles southwest of Shanghai, a landslide buried six four-story apartment buildings as residents slept at 10:30 p.m. Monday, local time. Rescuers pulled four survivors and two bodies from the debris, but were unable to say how many others were missing.
The slides threatened to sharply increase the death toll from a string of typhoons that have ravaged Pacific Asia in recent days. Typhoon Morakot is reported to have killed 8 people in China and at least 36 in Taiwan and the Philippines, with dozens more there reported missing.
Typhoon Etau, which struck Japan’s west coat on Monday, has killed 13 people and left 10 others missing, news agencies reported.
Initial reports from Hsiao-lin were sketchy. A spokesman for the National Fire Administration, Liang Yu-chu, said that 45 people had been pulled alive from the mudslide, but that no dead had been found.
“The whole village was buried in the landslide, so it’s hard to be certain,” Mr. Liang said. “They’re still searching.”
Early Tuesday, an earthquake with a 6.5 magnitude struck Japan, jolting eastern and central parts of the country and rattling houses in Tokyo. The quake, which prompted a warning — later canceled — of a modest tsunami, came a day after a 6.9 earthquake was reported in the same area.
A significantly larger earthquake was reported early Tuesday in the Andaman Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, one of the areas ravaged by the 2004 tsunami. That earthquake, with a preliminary magnitude of 7.7, prompted a tsunami watch for India, Myanmar, Indonesia, Thailand and Bangladesh that was later canceled.
The typhoon that hit Taiwan unleashed record rains from Friday to Sunday, causing what officials said was the worst flooding in half a century. The number of known dead in Taiwan was 15, with 32 severely injured. Those figures did not include potential landslide victims.
Morakot, which means emerald in Thai, struck the Philippines last week, killing 21 people, including a French tourist and two Belgian tourists, according to officials there. Others were reported missing.
Taiwan’s central government had warned earlier of landslide dangers after Morakot battered the island, dumping record rains across the south.
Helicopters took rescuers into the landslide site, in Kaohsiung County, and officials said accurate information on the situation was likely to emerge before daylight on Tuesday. Rescue efforts were complicated by continuing rain.
More than 170,000 people remained without power on Monday, the government said.
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