MSNBC: Hundreds flown to safety after Taiwan storm

REPORT: Military helicopters ferried stricken villagers to safety Tuesday from remote Taiwanese communities hit by Typhoon Morakot that left hundreds feared trapped by a torrent of mud and rock that buried their homes.

Choppers hovered over affected villages looking for signs of life. While rains were still falling, floodwaters receded Tuesday, and many of the aircraft were landing to send out squads of soldiers to look for survivors, photos released by the military showed. Special forces found more than 900 people who had fled three villages in the south, according to the military.

One helicopter crashed into a mountain as it flew on a mission to rescue villagers from the island's heavily wooded south, which was worst hit by the storm. Disaster official Chen Chung-hsien said it was unclear if the two pilots and one technician had survived the crash.

Morakot, which means "emerald" in Thai language, dumped as much as 80 inches of rain over the weekend on Taiwan, the worst flooding in 50 years. It then moved on to China, where authorities evacuated 1.5 million people and some 10,000 homes were destroyed.

Eight people have died in three provinces in eastern China, the Civil Affairs Ministry said. Taiwanese authorities put the confirmed death toll from Morakot at 62 and listed 57 people as missing, but that does not include residents in the village of Shiao Lin, where several hundred remain unaccounted for after a mudslide buried their farming settlement on Sunday.

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