The government is seeking information on the safety of Taiwanese in Tibet following a deadly flash flood near Gyirong Port on the Nepal-China border, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said late yesterday.
Fifty-one Taiwanese had registered as being in Tibet through the government's voluntary online travel registration system for people visiting China, the MAC said in a statement.
The MAC said it had asked the Straits Exchange Foundation to use available channels to check on the safety of Taiwanese in the affected area.
Photo: Reuters
It did not specify what those channels were.
The Straits Exchange Foundation is a semi-official organization tasked with handling matters involving Taiwanese visiting, living or doing business in China, as well as exchanges between the two sides. Formal communication between Taiwan and China has largely been suspended since 2016, when Beijing halted official contact following the Democratic Progressive Party's return to power.
The MAC also expressed the government's sympathy to China over the disaster.
The flash flood occurred on the Nepalese side of the border at about 10:30am yesterday, causing significant casualties and leaving people missing near Gyirong Port in Gyirong County in southern Tibet, China's state-run Xinhua news agency said.
Road access, communications and electricity on the Chinese side leading to the port were cut off, Xinhua reported at about 9pm.
Citing an on-site rescue command center, the news agency later reported that three people had been confirmed dead, while 265 remained missing, as of 8pm yesterday, with the number of casualties still being verified.
Gyirong Port connects to Rasuwa District in Nepal and is one of the largest land ports between China and Nepal. It serves as a major trade and passenger crossing between Tibet and the South Asian country.
The crossing reopened in January after a flood in July last year swept away a bridge linking the two sides, suspending cross-border traffic for nearly six months.
On the Nepal side of the border, authorities said that 162 people had been killed, BBC reported this morning.
More than 400 people are thought to be missing, including about 340 foreign nationals, the BBC reported, citing Nepalese authorities.
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