Taiwan deploy\ed more than 50,000 troops on Monday and evacuated thousands of people as Typhoon Nanmadol pummelled some of the island’s most densely populated areas. Soldiers moved in to help flood-threatened residents, a motorcyclist was reported killed, and in one remote area more than 300 villagers were trapped by landslides. The typhoon, which left at least 16 dead in the Philippines at the weekend, made landfall near the city of Taitung on the east coast of Taiwan in the early hours of Monday, according to the Central Weather Bureau. “This is the worst typhoon to hit Taiwan since Morakot,” which left more than 700 people dead or missing in 2009, a bureau official said. A motorcyclist was killed in north Taiwan’s Chungli city, after strong winds smashed a window on the fourth floor of a building, causing shards of glass to fall to the ground level, according to cable network Eastern Television. An official at the Central Emergency Operation Centre could not immediately confirm the report. The typhoon was downgraded to a tropical storm while slowly moving northwest, packing winds of 90 kilometres (54 miles) per hour, down from earlier high speeds of 137kph.
It was 30 kilometres southeast of the Penghu island group in the middle of the Taiwan Straits as of 1000 GMT, the weather bureau said.
Across the island, authorities moved more than 8,000 people to safer places, according to the emergency centre, which said more than 50,000 troops were deployed.
