A body part was recovered from the sea off the northeastern coast below the Suhua Highway yesterday, but it remained unclear if it belonged to any of the individuals missing since the highway was hit by deadly landslides on Oct. 21.
“The body part was discovered in water below the highway’s 114.5km point at a depth of 6m,” said a spokesman for the search operation’s command center.
The remains have been sent to the Yilan District Prosecutors’ Office for DNA testing, the spokesman said.
Three people have been confirmed dead in the Suhua Highway disaster that occurred when rains and winds brought by Typhoon as it swept past Taiwan triggered lethal rockslides that brought down several sections of the road. Another 23 are still unaccounted for.
One of the three confirmed fatalities was a Chinese tourist identified as Gong Yen (龔艷), and 19 of the missing are Chinese nationals. All are presumed dead, authorities said on Wednesday after issuing death certificates for the tourists.
Nearly 100 family members of the Chinese tourists traveled to the collapsed sections of the cliff-edge highway overlooking the Pacific Ocean yesterday to hold memorial services.
Religious services were held at the highway’s 112.8km and 114.5km points, where two tour buses carrying the missing Chinese tourists are believed to have fallen off the cliffs after rockslides hit the highway amid torrential rain.
Yao Ta-Kuang (姚大光), president of the Travel Agent Association of the Republic of China, said the bereaved family members hope that a monument can be erected at the site of the disaster.
“Some of them plan to revisit the site on the first anniversary of their loved ones’ deaths,” Yao said.
All the relatives of the Chinese victims were scheduled to return to China today.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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