The joint operation included six Chinese rescue ships (Reuters)
Taipei:
A Chinese fishing boat capsized off Taiwan’s outlying islands on Thursday, killing two people, the Taipei Coast Guard said, as Taiwan and China were conducting a joint search and rescue mission for the two missing crew members.
At around 6 a.m. on Thursday (2200 GMT on Wednesday), the Coast Guard received a report that a boat carrying six people sank 1.07 nautical miles southwest of Dongding Island in the Kinmen Islands, and the Coast Guard dispatched four patrol boats.
The joint operation, which included six Chinese rescue ships, comes a month after Taiwan’s coast guard chased a Chinese fishing boat in the area, killing two people and exacerbating ongoing tensions between Taipei and Beijing.
The Coast Guard said in a statement that “through the joint efforts of the search and rescue units of both parties and the Dongding Guards”, two crew members were rescued and the other two “had no signs of life.”
Kinmen is a territory administered by Taipei but is located five kilometers (three miles) from the Chinese city of Xiamen.
On February 14, a Chinese ship carrying four people capsized near Kinmen while being pursued by the Taiwan Coast Guard, and all people on board fell into the water.
Two of the crew members died and two others were rescued and temporarily detained in Kinmen.
A survivor reportedly said the ship was “crash”, but Taiwan insisted the coast guard was following legal procedures because the ship had entered “prohibited waters.”
Beijing has accused Taiwan of “seeking to evade responsibility and conceal the truth” over the incident, while Taiwanese coast guard officials said the vessel involved “lost its balance and capsized” after zigzagging while trying to evade patrol boats.
Taiwan’s Coast Guard Director said that since the incident on February 14, an average of six to seven Chinese ships have appeared in the waters near Kinmen.
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