Fourteen people have died in Taiwan¡¯s eastern county of Hualien, with 124 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 heading for 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.