The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday confirmed that a Taiwanese woman is presumed to have died after being trapped under a collapsed hotel in Myanmar after a magnitude 7.7 earthquake hit the country on Friday last week.
At a weekly news conference in Taipei yesterday, several local reporters asked the ministry about the case of the woman.
The woman was trapped in a collapsed hotel in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, following the earthquake, ministry spokesman Hsiao Kuang-wei (蕭光偉) said.
Photo: CNA
As air and land traffic between Yangon and Mandalay was cut off and communications were disrupted, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Myanmar asked some Taiwanese in Mandalay to assist in the case, he said.
After the roads leading to Mandalay reopened, some office staff members on Monday evening arrived in the city and immediately headed to the hotel to participate in the rescue mission, Hsiao said.
“Regrettably, we were informed by the woman’s family members that the search-and-rescue team found no signs of life on site. Unfortunately, she is presumed dead,” he said.
An official in Mandalay expressed condolences to her family members, while Representative to Myanmar Chou Chung-hsing (周中興) called them by the phone to express the government’s condolences, Hsiao said, adding that the representative office would also assist them with the funeral arrangements.
With infrastructure and buildings severely damaged, and transportation, power, water and the Internet disrupted in Myanmar, the ministry would assist Taiwanese in the country and ensure their safety, he said.
“The representative office has inquired through different channels, and it has found no information about other Taiwanese being trapped at this time,” he said.
Meanwhile, asked if the freeing of Taiwanese victims from Myanmar’s scam centers has been affected by the earthquake, Hsiao said the government’s rescue operation is still in progress.
As of Friday last week, the representative office in Myanmar had received 496 reports about Taiwanese people stuck in scam centers, and the office has registered all the cases in detail and tracked them, he said.
Among the reported cases, 261 people have safely returned to Taiwan, while rescue operations for freeing 235 Taiwanese from scam centers across Myanmar are being carried out, he added.
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