The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday confirmed that a Taiwanese fishing boat was chased off the Somali coast by pirates for several hours at about midnight. One crew member was wounded during the incident.
The vessel had since evaded the pirate ship and was heading for the Maldives, the ministry said.
Samuel Chen (陳士良), director-general of the ministry’s Department of African Affairs, told a press briefing that the fishing boat Ruei Man Fa was chased by a light boat sent by a larger pirate ship passing off as a Taiwanese vessel about 395 nautical miles (731km) southeast of Somalia’s Cape Guardafui.
Hsu Ching-tsuan (許清鑽), the captain of the fishing boat, said the light boat fired between 50 and 60 rounds at the Taiwanese boat during the chase, hitting an Indonesian crew member in the thigh.
The bullet did not hit any major arteries and the bleeding soon stopped, Chen said.
The fishing boat has a crew of 14, two of them Taiwanese nationals, Chen said.
The light boat appeared to have given up the chase around 3:55am and the Taiwanese vessel headed toward the Maldives at a speed of 9 knots per hour, he said, adding that it would take the vessel about 100 hours to reach its destination.
Chen said the ministry received an emergency notice about the attack at about 1am, after which the department informed the Piracy Reporting Center at the International Maritime Organization’s International Maritime Bureau in Kuala Lumpur.
The ministry also asked Mauritius-based personnel from the Fisheries Agency to ensure the wounded crew member received medical treatment after the boat arrives in the Maldives, Chen said.
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
Police have issued warnings against traveling to Cambodia or Thailand when others have paid for the travel fare in light of increasing cases of teenagers, middle-aged and elderly people being tricked into traveling to these countries and then being held for ransom. Recounting their ordeal, one victim on Monday said she was asked by a friend to visit Thailand and help set up a bank account there, for which they would be paid NT$70,000 to NT$100,000 (US$2,136 to US$3,051). The victim said she had not found it strange that her friend was not coming along on the trip, adding that when she
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
RSS