Rescuers yesterday cut through the bottom of an upended tugboat to free a Chinese interpreter and searched for 22 more missing people, including eight foreigners, after the vessel capsized in the Yangtze River, the state-run Xinhua news agency and officials said.
Four Singaporeans, an Indonesian, a Malaysian, an Indian and a Japanese were among the missing after the tugboat overturned on Thursday afternoon, during a test voyage in the river’s Fubei Channel in the eastern province of Jiangsu, Xinhua said.
Three people have been rescued, including the interpreter early yesterday, about 14 hours after the boat toppled over with 25 people aboard, the report said.
Photo: AFP
Rescuers said they believed people were trapped in the boat’s cabin and were using a crane to try to lift the sunken boat, but that swift currents were making that difficult, Xinhua said.
The missing included the boat’s owner and engineers, it said.
Wang Zhenkai told Xinhua he was the interpreter for a Japanese engineer who was pulled away by swirling currents as the boat went down.
Wang said he survived by holding onto a hydraulic pump.
“Only the two of us were in the cockpit. We had just finished the host load test of the boat’s main engine when the vessel suddenly slid over. Water immediately filled in,” Wang was quoted as saying.
The Jiangsu provincial government’s news office said that 27 vessels were involved in the search and rescue operation, but had no further details about the sinking.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
RSS