At least six apartment blocks have collapsed following landslides in eastern China, trapping an unknown number of people, state media reports.

Officials say they have managed to pull six people alive from the rubble in the town of Pengxi in Zhejiang province. 28 families are thought to live in the blocks.

The landslides were triggered by heavy rains caused by Typhoon Morakot, which has swept across parts of East Asia.

Meanwhile in Taiwan, hundreds of people are feared dead after a mudslide caused by the typhoon buried a small village, the BBC reported.

Chinese reports say it was 2230 local time on Monday when the landslide hit Pengxi, near Wenzhou city. A witness told Chinese television it took "one second" for the mud and rocks to engulf the four-storey apartment buildings.

Two people have been confirmed dead so far and the death toll is expected to rise.

Xinhua reports that the rescue operations are being hampered by the large amounts of debris that have fallen onto them.

Morakot weakened to a tropical storm early Monday, but it has still been lashing south-eastern China with heavy rain.

Over a million people have been evacuated from their homes and six deaths have been reported - including four in Zhejiang province, and two others in Fujian and Jiangxi provinces.

State news agency Xinhua said hundreds of villages and towns had been flooded and more than 2 000 houses and buildings had collapsed.

Before ploughing into China, Typhoon Morakot dropped some 2 metres of rain on Taiwan this weekend, causing the worst flooding in five decades.

Rescue operations resumed on Tuesday morning to find survivors from a mudslide on Sunday in the south-western mountain village of Shiao Lin that buried about 600 people.

Typhoons and tropical storms are frequent in the region between July and September.