Marines conducted a military drill on Itu Aba Island (Taiping Island, 太平島) earlier this month, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) said yesterday, adding it was a move to protect Taiwan’s sovereignty.
Lin told a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee that he was among the lawmakers invited to watch the drill at the navy headquarters.
He said the amphibious landing drill took place on April 10, in which an occupation by an enemy force was simulated on the island, which was then reclaimed through amphibious landing attacks.
The marines and their weapons were transported to Taiping by a fleet of navy vessels, including the Cheng Kung-class and Lafayette-class frigates and landing craft, the lawmaker said.
During the drill, marines in more than 20 assault vehicles launched an amphibious landing on the shores of Taiping, he added.
“The scene was pretty spectacular. The marines successfully landed on the beach and cleaned out the remainder of the enemy on the island. Coast Guard Administration officers also joined the exercise,” the lawmaker added.
As the US and China would have learned of the action, Lin said he wondered why the military had kept the drill confidential.
At the time, he had asked Deputy Minister of National Defense Andrew Hsia (夏立言) to publicize footage of the drill to show the military’s strength and its efforts to protect the nation’s territory.
The Coast Guard Administration has been assigned to protect the 0.49km2 island, which is 1,600km from Greater Kaohsiung.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS