(Adds details, changes missing person count)
TAIPEI, Sept 16 (Reuters) - A typhoon which brought down parts of two bridges and dumped as much as 1,400 mm (55 inches) of rain in parts of Taiwan has killed seven people with 13 missing, disaster relief workers said on Tuesday.
One person died when a car plunged into a river from a collapsed bridge in Taichung county in central Taiwan, government disaster workers said. Five people were missing in the accident.
A collapsed tunnel in central Taiwan killed three people, with a search underway for seven more. The others died in mudslides and traffic accidents, according to official reports.
Typhoon Sinlaku also brought down a section of a bridge in Kaohsiung county in southern Taiwan on Tuesday, while a seven-storey hotel slipped into a raging river at a hot springs resort area in central Taiwan, leaving one missing.
Twenty people have been hurt around the island as heavy rain triggered hundreds of mudslides and creeks burst their banks.
Sinlaku is on course to reach Japan within 48 hours as a tropical storm, according to the weather service Tropical Storm Risk.
Typhoons regularly hit China, Taiwan, the Philippines and Japan from August until the end of the year, gathering strength from the warm waters of the Pacific or the South China Sea before weakening over land.
Reporting by Ralph Jennings; Editing by Jeremy Laurence
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.