Tropical storm kills 53 across Asia

The storm pushed on toward South Korea, but torrential rains at its fringes continued yesterday in many of Taiwan's mountainous areas and doused parts of southeastern China.

In Taiwan, where a total 19 people have been killed in the past few days and nine others were missing, mudslides covered about 30 houses on a hill in central Nantou County. Five bodies were recovered from the rubble, the National Disaster Relief Center said.

Another mudslide in nearby Taichung County killed three people, and an 80-year-old woman and her 4-year-old grandson drowned in their flooded home there, police said.

In China, a mother and her son drowned after falling out of a boat on a lake in Huzhou city, about 80 miles southwest of Shanghai, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

Before hitting Taiwan and China, Mindulle killed at least 32 people in the Philippines and left 11 others missing, its National Disaster Coordination Center said Sunday.

The military dispatched about 1,000 soldiers to rescue hundreds of villagers and tourists trapped in mountainous regions of Taiwan, officials said.

Television news showed rescuers struggling with their overturned raft in a raging river in central Taichung County before reaching a family of seven trapped in their hillside house.

In Nantou's Jenai village, where a wooden bridge was washed away by floodwaters, soldiers used ropes to pull residents from a cliff and across a creek.

At a nearby resort destroyed by rock slides, about 150 tourists were placed in a temporary shelter as roads were washed away and they were unable to vacate the area, officials said.