Only 44 of the more than 1,300 registered residents in Siaolin Village managed to avoid the mudslides.

The reports said earlier over 600 residents were still unaccounted for, quoting a female family member of residents believed to be trapped in the village and possible buried alive.

A 46-year-old man surnamed Wong said yesterday 10 of his family as well as their house disappeared under the mudslides.

Wong told cable TV news channel TVBS that he was able to escape the disaster because he was out making the rounds of his farms.

Another rescued villager surnamed Lin told the United Evening News that he also believed as many as 600 people were still buried by the mud.

The mudslide was triggered in the early morning and covered a large part of the village, including a primary school and many homes, he said.

It was like a part of the mountain just fell on the village, covering all of the buildings, he said.

But he did not explain the apparent discrepancy between estimate of deaths of survivors and the policeman's smaller estimate of people still missing.

A police officer said about 100 people have been rescued by military helicopters or had avoided Sunday morning's mudslide in the village.

Members of a military rescue team said late yesterday they found more than 100 survivors, including adults and children, gathering at farming huts on a plateau on the mountain.

Helicopter pilots said rescue missions will start today to lift them to safety.

A total of 1,313 people have their household registration in the village, but only a fraction of them live there year round.

A separate survivor said many people had returned recently to the village because of the bamboo shoots harvest season and family reunions for the local Father's Day on Aug. 8.

The village was cut off from the outside world after flood waters destroyed a bridge about 12 kilometers away.

The survivors urged the government to seize every valuable moment to launch a rescue operation to help the trapped villagers.

Earlier in the day, two army helicopters managed to airlift 26 villagers from Siaolin and two more from neighboring Tajin Village to safety.

Army authorities originally planned to airlift all 44 of the Siaolin villagers who managed to flee from their mudslide-stricken homes, but rescue efforts were suspended after four sorties due to bad weather and low visibility.

The poor weather conditions also forced the National Airborne Service Corps (NASC) to cancel its plan to deliver relief supplies to two other mudslide-damaged mountain villages -- Namasia and Taoyuan.

The staggering amount of rainfall delivered by Morakot over the weekend led to massive flooding and landslides that wreaked havoc in Kaohsiung County's mountainous villages, cutting them off from the outside world.

Kaohsiung County Magistrate Yang Chiu-hsing personally took an NASC flight in the morning to check the situations in the isolated villages. But the helicopter could not make a landing when flying to Siaolin because of poor weather.

Some rescued villagers criticized Yang for failing to take timely precautionary measures and delaying in organizing relief efforts.

Yang said all-out rescue efforts could only begin after swelling water in major rivers recedes as all bridges and roads linking the mountainous villages with the outside have been severely damaged.

Interior Minister Liao Liou-yi visited Kaoshiung County's Chishan Junior High School, which was turned into a post-disaster operation base.

Some local officials complained that the central government was slow in responding to the region's worst flooding in half a century.

Liao said that he has asked the armed forces to enter the disaster zones to rescue stranded villagers as soon as weather conditions permit.