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Three soldiers killed after Army tank falls into river

ROC Central News Agency

2016/08/16 16:33:31

Taipei, Aug. 16 (CNA) An Army CM-11 tank fell into a stream in Pingtung County on Tuesday after a training exercise, leaving one soldier and two non-commissioned officers dead and one severely injured, the Army said.

As the battle tank was returning to its base following a live-fire drill, it fell into the Wangsha Stream in Pingtung because of a problem with its left track, the Army said.

The tank lost its balance as it was trying to make a right turn because the left track got stuck while the right track operated normally, it said, citing the surviving driver of the tank.

The driver made it out of the tank on his own, but the other four people in the tank had to be pulled out and were rushed to two hospitals in Pingtung, it added. They showed no vital signs at the scene, according to military personnel who were there.

Three of the four were pronounced dead by doctors in the afternoon, while 1st Lt. Wu Te-wei (吳得瑋) saw his pulse return after emergency treatment and was later transferred to another hospital in neighboring Kaohsiung for further treatment, the Army said.

Those pronounced dead were non-commissioned officers Chen Shih-kun (陳世坤) and Chen Ping-yi (陳秉逸) and solider Chang Chih-wei (張志偉).

The driver, soldier Yang Yen-lin (楊炎霖), suffered only minor injuries and was being treated at a Kaohsiung hospital, according to the Ministry of National Defense.

After news of the incident emerged, Defense Minister Feng Shih-kuan (馮世寬) asked Gen. Yen De-fa (嚴德發), chief of the general staff, to lead a task force to travel to Pingtung to look into the incident and identify its exact cause.

In addition to the military investigation, Pingtung prosecutors were also sent to the scene to look into what happened.

President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) expressed her condolences to the families of the deceased and the injured, and asked the Ministry of National Defense to identify the cause of the accident as soon as possible, Presidential Office spokesman Alex Huang (黃重諺) said.

It was reported earlier that the training drill was held in preparation for the annual Han Kuang exercises, but the Army later stressed that it was a separate live-fire drill.

The Han Kuang exercises, Taiwan's most important war games, will take place from Aug. 22 to 26 and simulate various scenarios of a Chinese attack.

(By Kuo Chih-hsuan, Lu Hsin-hui, Hsieh Chia-chen and Elaine Hou)
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