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President Tsai says fatal missile blunder 'should not have occurred'

ROC Central News Agency

2016/07/02 17:13:57

Taipei, July 2 (CNA) President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) expressed her deepest condolences Saturday to the family of a fisherman who was killed after the Navy fired a supersonic anti-ship missile by mistake and hit a Taiwanese fishing boat, saying that such an incident "should not have occurred."

In a speech at the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport upon her return from a nine-day trip to Latin America, she said that Taiwan continued to face many challenges domestically when she was abroad, noting the missile blunder that occurred on Friday.

Expressing her deepest condolences to the family of Huang Wen-chung (黃文忠), she said she agreed with Huang's wife that "this incident should not have happened."

She pledged that the government will deal with the fallout of the incident with a responsible attitude.

Tsai also spoke about the fruits of her first overseas trip since taking office on May 20, which took her to Panama and Paraguay. She also made a stopover in Miami on her way to Panama and made a transit stop in Los Angeles before heading back to Taiwan.

Tsai is set to call a National Security Council (NSC) meeting at the Presidential Office as soon as she returns to Taipei. She will be briefed by officials from the NSC and the Ministry of National Defense.

The locally developed Hsiung Feng III missile was accidentally launched from one of the Navy's 500-ton Chinchiang-class corvettes at Zuoying Military Harbor in Kaohsiung during a drill at 8:15 a.m. on Friday and hit the fishing boat about two minutes later, according to the Navy.

The Defense Ministry confirmed that the missile ripped through the "Hsiang Li Sheng" (翔利昇) fishing boat, causing the death of the captain and injuring three other crew members on the boat.

The ministry has issued an apology and has blamed the incident on human error; it said a petty officer on board the Chinchiang (PGG-610) did not follow standard operating procedure and launched the missile during a simulated attack.

The fishing boat was some 40 nautical miles away from the military harbor in southern Taiwan. A chart provided by the Navy showed that the simulated position targeted by the missile was in the Taiwan Strait, northwest of the harbor and southeast of the offshore county of Penghu.

(By Elaine Hou and Lu Hsin-hui)
ENDITEM/ke