The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday confirmed that a Taiwanese woman is presumed to have died after being trapped under a collapsed hotel in Myanmar after a magnitude 7.7 earthquake hit the country on Friday last week.
At a weekly news conference in Taipei yesterday, several local reporters asked the ministry about the case of the woman.
The woman was trapped in a collapsed hotel in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, following the earthquake, ministry spokesman Hsiao Kuang-wei (蕭光偉) said.
Photo: CNA
As air and land traffic between Yangon and Mandalay was cut off and communications were disrupted, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Myanmar asked some Taiwanese in Mandalay to assist in the case, he said.
After the roads leading to Mandalay reopened, some office staff members on Monday evening arrived in the city and immediately headed to the hotel to participate in the rescue mission, Hsiao said.
“Regrettably, we were informed by the woman’s family members that the search-and-rescue team found no signs of life on site. Unfortunately, she is presumed dead,” he said.
An official in Mandalay expressed condolences to her family members, while Representative to Myanmar Chou Chung-hsing (周中興) called them by the phone to express the government’s condolences, Hsiao said, adding that the representative office would also assist them with the funeral arrangements.
With infrastructure and buildings severely damaged, and transportation, power, water and the Internet disrupted in Myanmar, the ministry would assist Taiwanese in the country and ensure their safety, he said.
“The representative office has inquired through different channels, and it has found no information about other Taiwanese being trapped at this time,” he said.
Meanwhile, asked if the freeing of Taiwanese victims from Myanmar’s scam centers has been affected by the earthquake, Hsiao said the government’s rescue operation is still in progress.
As of Friday last week, the representative office in Myanmar had received 496 reports about Taiwanese people stuck in scam centers, and the office has registered all the cases in detail and tracked them, he said.
Among the reported cases, 261 people have safely returned to Taiwan, while rescue operations for freeing 235 Taiwanese from scam centers across Myanmar are being carried out, he added.
Taiwan is stepping up plans to create self-sufficient supply chains for combat drones and increase foreign orders from the US to counter China’s numerical superiority, a defense official said on Saturday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, the official said the nation’s armed forces are in agreement with US Admiral Samuel Paparo’s assessment that Taiwan’s military must be prepared to turn the nation’s waters into a “hellscape” for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Paparo, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, reiterated the concept during a Congressional hearing in Washington on Wednesday. He first coined the term in a security conference last
Prosecutors today declined to say who was questioned regarding alleged forgery on petitions to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators, after Chinese-language media earlier reported that members of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Youth League were brought in for questioning. The Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau confirmed that two people had been questioned, but did not disclose any further information about the ongoing investigation. KMT Youth League members Lee Hsiao-liang (李孝亮) and Liu Szu-yin (劉思吟) — who are leading the effort to recall DPP caucus chief executive Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) and Legislator Wu Pei-yi (吳沛憶) — both posted on Facebook saying: “I
Sung Chien-liang (宋建樑), who led efforts to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Kun-cheng (李坤城), was released on bail of NT$80,000 today amid outcry over his decision to wear a Nazi armband to questioning the night before. Sung arrived at the New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office for questioning in a recall petition forgery case last night wearing a red armband bearing a swastika, carrying a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and giving a Nazi salute. Sung left the building at 1:15am without the armband and covering the book with his coat. Lee said today that this is a serious
Firefighters are working to put out a fire on Taipei’s Yangmingshan (陽明山) reported earlier this morning. The cause of the fire is still under investigation. The Taipei Fire Department said it received a report of a fire at Xiaoyoukeng (小油坑) at 11:17am, dispatching four command vehicles, 16 firetrucks, one ambulance and 72 personnel. The fire is still burning on about 250m² of land, according to initial estimates, as eyewitnesses reported seeing smoke rising from the mountain. The Yangmingshan National Park Headquarters on Facebook said the Qixingshan (七星山) hiking trail starting from Xiaoyoukeng and the Xiaoyoukeng parking lot are closed as firefighters work to put
RSS