(10/08/2007)
TAIPEI - Typhoon Krosa left five people dead and one missing in Taiwan before weakening into a tropical storm on Sunday, weathermen and rescuers said.

Krosa produced strong winds and rain, uprooted trees, interrupted traffic and triggered landslides.

Rescuers using bulldozers found two bodies a 60-year-old man and his 43-year-old son -- after mudslides crushed their house on Yangmingshan mountain outside Taipei, said the National Fire Agency, which coordinates rescue work.

In northern Hsinchu, a 79-year-old man fell to his death from a roof, while a cook was buried alive by landslides at a hostel where he worked, it said.

Television images showed rescuers using shovels and bulldozers to rescue the cook, but rescuers said they feared he was dead.

In the northeastern Ilan county, which bore the brunt of the powerful typhoon, a man was washed away by flashing floods sparked by heavy rains. The man's body was found Sunday morning.

A 50-year-old woman was also killed when her motorcycle crashed into a road sign, the agency said.

Fifty-three people were injured by falling trees, signs or broken glass, it said.

Electricity supplies to more than two million households were cut off, authorities said.

Most domestic trains, ferries and flights were cancelled, and nearly 200 international flights were also delayed.

"The power of Krosa is on the decline and it has been reduced to a tropical storm after it made landfall on the northeastern tip of the island," an official of the Central Weather Bureau said.

Despite weakening of the storm, residents were told not to relax precautions as weathermen warned of continued downpours that could lead to flooding and landslides.

Krosa, meaning crane in the Khmer language, was 140 kilometres (87 miles) northwest of Taiwan's northern Keelung harbour at 0100 GMT, the Central Weather Bureau said.

With a radius of 300 kilometres (186 miles) and packing winds gusting up to 108 kilometres per hour, down from 160 kilometres previously, Krosa was moving north-northeast at a speed of 12 kilometres an hour, it said. (CNA/AFP/PAB)