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LIUKUEI, Taiwan: Taiwan on Thursday deployed thousands of extra troops as it faced growing public anger and pressure to rescue people trapped by deadly landslides triggered by Typhoon Morakot.
The military said 4,000 more soldiers were added to the rescue effort, bringing the total to 38,000, as the death toll from the island's worst floods in half a century rose to 116 with fears it may still increase dramatically.
Another 300 people who had been reported missing were feared dead after the village of Hsiaolin in southern Taiwan was flattened by landslides.
"Some 300 people were missing and possibly buried under mudslides in Hsiaolin village. The situation is very pessimistic," Kaohsiung county magistrate Yang Chiu-hsing told AFP.
Yang said more than 2,000 villagers in the south were believed to be trapped awaiting evacuation by air.
Rescuers were struggling against mounting hazards as the floods created at least four lakes in the area, two of which had already over spilt, he said.
Meanwhile, helicopters were scouring remote areas in the centre and south of the island, dropping food and medicine to cut-off villages and evacuating people to safety, while rain continued to fall.
More than 15,000 people have been rescued since last weekend's typhoon, which dumped three metres of rain, but the government has been accused by survivors and politicians of doing too little, too late.
Dozens of mountain villages populated mainly by indigenous aboriginal tribes have been totally cut off for days after landslides destroyed roads and bridges, leaving them only accessible by air.
Tempers have flared as desperate relatives gathered at rescue centres - police and soldiers Wednesday had to push back people who tried to storm their way on to helicopters heading to the stricken zone.
"32 DEAD, SOS," read a sign painted in red on a smashed bridge at the only entrance to the village of Hsinfa, a hot spring resort where bodies were found buried by mudslides.
"We are helpless. We are forgotten. We have been waiting for the helicopters without supplies," one villager told AFP.
President Ma Ying-jeou was confronted by relatives complaining about his government's handling of the crisis on Thursday when he travelled to the county of Yunlin to inspect relief efforts.
Television footage showed dozens of people surrounding Ma, with one man angrily asking: "What is the government doing? It's too late, they cannot be saved."
Ma deflected criticism his administration had been too proud to ask for outside help by saying the United States, Japan, Singapore, China had already made donations and that help from other countries was welcome.
Among the first aid to arrive was a shipment of food and medicines from Singapore, the foreign ministry said.
It said the government had asked for international help providing rescue equipment and that more than 50 countries had sent their condolences or said they were willing to help.
The cabinet said it was planning to allocate a special budget for the estimated 70 billion Taiwan dollars (2.18 billion US) in typhoon damages, pending parliament's final approval.
The National Fire Agency said around 200 people were trapped and awaiting evacuation at a hot spring resort in Liukuei, a township made up of a cluster of mountain villages.
Meanwhile, the military said it had located 700 more survivors in Liukuei on Thursday morning and had started moving the group to safety.
Villagers told AFP that more people could have been buried alive as some villages were either flattened or badly damaged in the typhoon.
Typhoon Morakot caused an estimated 280 million US dollars of damage to agriculture and tens of millions of dollars of lost tourism revenue to the scenic mountain regions where hot spring spas are popular.
Five undersea cables were damaged as the typhoon triggered mudslides in the sea off southern Taiwan, disrupting Internet connections and jamming telephone services, said Chunghwa Telecom.
Morakot was one of the worst typhoons to strike Taiwan in 50 years. In August 1959 a typhoon killed 667 people and left around 1,000 missing. - AFP/de
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