TAIPEI, Taiwan — A typhoon-spawned mudslide engulfed a mountain village in southern Taiwan, burying schools and homes and hundreds of people under debris, a police official said today.

Typhoon Morakot dumped up to 80 inches of rain on some communities over the weekend before moving on to China, where it forced the evacuation of nearly 1 million people along the east coast. Earlier, it struck the Philippines, leaving at least 22 dead.

It has now been downgraded to a tropical storm.

A Taiwanese police official who identified himself by his surname, Wang, said about 100 people have been rescued by military helicopter or avoided Sunday morning's mudslide in Shiao Lin village.

One of the rescued villagers, Lin Chien-chung, told the United Evening News he believes as many as 600 people were still buried by the mud.

BAGHDAD — A double truck bombing tore through the village of a small Shiite ethnic minority near the northern city of Mosul, while blasts in Baghdad today also targeted Shiites in a wave of violence that killed at least 45 people and wounded more than 200, Iraqi officials said.The attacks provided a grim example of U.S. military warnings that insurgents are targeting Shiites in an effort to reignite the kind of sectarian violence that nearly tore the country apart in 2006 and 2007.The U.S. military stressed despite the rise in attacks, the Shiites are showing restraint and not retaliating as they did more than two years ago when a similar series of attacks and bombings provoked a Shiite backlash that degenerated into a sectarian slaughter claiming tens of thousands of lives.

KINSHASA, Congo — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is in Congo to push democracy in the war-devastated county and draw attention to an epidemic of sexual assaults in its violence-torn east.Clinton arrived in the Congolese capital today and will visit a hospital founded by former NBA star Dikembe Mutombo, a native of Congo, and will hold a town-hall meeting. A day later, she plans to go to the eastern city of Goma where she will meet victims of horrific rapes and other sexual crimes committed by the military and rebel groups.

ROME — Sixteen sailors, including 10 Italians, whose tug was seized by Somali pirates four months ago are free after the pirates abandoned the ship, Italian authorities said today.Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said the Somali Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke notified him of the release in a phone call Sunday evening.Italian and Somali authorities had been working together gathering intelligence and applying diplomacy to win the hostages' release, Frattini said.The Foreign Ministry said no ransom was paid.