An army drill brought three military men to their end, a week before the annual Han Kuang military exercise.
Three Taiwanese soldiers were killed in an army drill after an armored tank has plunged from a three-metre bridge amidst heavy rain.
The accident happened a week before the annual Han Kuang military exercise which is aimed at preparing the island from any potential attack by the People’s Liberation Army of China.
The armored vehicle, a CM11 unit, was carrying five soldiers, who reportedly belonged to the Eighth Army Command, and was returning to base after a firing test when it fell into the Wangsha river in Pingtung county in the south of the country.
The driver managed to get out of the tank immediately but incurred light injuries.
The captain was revived and later taken to a military hospital in neighboring Kaohsiung city. He is currently in comatose.
The three soldiers were reportedly unresponsive when they were pulled out of the tank but were later pronounced dead.
President Tsai has already sent her condolences and demanded a speedy investigation into the cause of the incident.
She is scheduled to preside over the military exercises, which simulate possible attacks by Beijing.
During the course of an investigation, the driver passed the alcohol test.
It is believed that a mechanical failure in one of the tracks left the driver unable to make a required left turn, the army said.
It was also suspected the heavy rain caused to river to swell and rapidly engulf the tank.
Three deadly accidents related to the annual military exercise, including the latest one, have been reported over the past 32 years, a newspaper said.
Beijing has claimed the island, which lies off its southeastern coast, as part of its territory since 1949, when China’s Nationalist Party or Kuomintang (KMT) fled there after losing the Chinese Civil War to Mao Zedong’s Communist Party.
After her election victory, Tsai promised to “maintain the status quo for peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait” and “ensure that no provocation or accidents take place.” But the former legal scholar, a graduate of Cornell University and the London School of Economics, also pledged to “defend Taiwan’s sovereignty,” and called for respect for the island’s “national identity and international space.”
That’s not an idea that goes down well in Beijing, which insists that any country it has diplomatic relations with cannot maintain formal ties with Taiwan. Consequently, the island has only 21 diplomatic partners.