Friday, August 14, 2009 TAIPEI: About 300 people are estimated to have been killed by a massive landslide that wiped out much of a village in southern Taiwan, news agency reports quoted a government official, as saying on Friday.The tragedy is said to have taken place in the village of Hsiao Li.The official death toll in Taiwan from "Typhoon Morakot" till last weekend stood at 116. The worst floods in decades washed out roads, snapped bridges and sent low-rise buildings crashing into rivers, according to the latest statement by the disaster agency.Pressure is mounting on Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou to expedite operations to rescue hundreds of residents of remote mountainous villages buried or stranded in the aftermath of the typhoon.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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