Ammon News - Fourteen people have died in Taiwan's popular tourist hub in the eastern county of Hualien, with 129 missing after a barrier lake in the mountains overflowed to deluge a town during a typhoon, the fire department said on Wednesday.

Taiwan has been lashed since Monday by the outer rim of Super Typhoon Ragasa, now hitting China's southern coast and the Asian financial hub of Hong Kong.

The barrier lake, formed by landslides triggered by earlier heavy rain in the island's sparsely populated east, burst its banks on Tuesday afternoon to send a wall of water into the township of Guangfu.

The typhoon brought about 70 cm (28 inches) of rain to Taiwan's east, though the populous west coast, home to the crucial semiconductor industry, was not affected.

In 2009, Typhoon Morakot cut a swathe of destruction through Taiwan's south, killing about 700 and causing damage of up to $3 billion.

Reuters