TAIPEI - AT LEAST six people were killed and 60 others injured
on Wednesday when a train carrying Chinese tourists was hit by a
falling tree at a popular mountain spot in central Taiwan,
officials said.
The sightseeing train was travelling along Mount Ali when the
tree trunk fell, causing four carriages to derail and overturn,
said an official at the forestry bureau, which supervises the
area.
Twenty-two people were seriously injured, according to the
bureau. The tourism bureau later confirmed that a total of 108
Chinese tourists were on the train, of whom at least four were
killed and 34 hurt.
Taiwan's Defence Ministry said it sent two helicopters to the
scene, near the resort town of Alishan. The Alishan rail line,
running east from the southern city of Chiayi, corkscrews through a
series of steep mountains and has long been one of Taiwan's premier
tourist attractions.
Alishan has long been a magnet for Chinese tourists, who over
the past year have been flocking to Taiwan at a rate of more than
4,000 a day. China and Taiwan split amid civil war in 1949 and the
mainland still claims the island as part of its territory.
But under the leadership of Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou,
relations between the longtime rivals have improved substantially,
leading to increased tourist arrivals on the island and an
explosion of trade and investment on both sides of the Taiwan
Strait.
-- AFP, AP