Taiwan\u2019s top military official was among eight people killed when a helicopter crash-landed on Thursday in a mountainous area near the capital, Taipei, the defence ministry has said.<\/p>\n
The chief of general staff, air force general Shen Yi-ming, died in the incident while five of the 13 people onboard survived, the military.<\/p>\n
The defence ministry said aviation authorities lost contact with the Black Hawk helicopter at 8.22am local time and it dispatched a rescue team. The helicopter had left Taipei on a mission to visit soldiers in the north-east county of Yilan.<\/p>\n
Taiwan is due to hold presidential and parliamentary elections on 11 January. The president, Tsai Ing-wen, who is seeking re-election, cancelled all campaign activities until Saturday and urged authorities to make every effort at rescue. She was scheduled to deliver a speech at 3pm.<\/p>\n
The United States, which has no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan but is its strongest international backer and main arms supplier, sold the island 60 UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters in 2010. It was not immediately clear if the helicopter in Thursday\u2019s incident was one of them.<\/p>\n
It was the latest in a series of aviation accidents in Taiwan. In 2018 a Black Hawk helicopter crashed off the east coast, killing six people onboard, and an F-16 fighter jet crashed in a separate incident, killing a pilot.<\/p>\n
In 2016 the navy fired a supersonic missile in error, hitting a fishing boat in waters that separate Taiwan from China.<\/p>\n
China, which claims Taiwan as its territory to be brought under Beijing\u2019s control by force if necessary, regularly calls the island the most sensitive issue in its ties with the US. _The Guardian<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Taiwan\u2019s top military official was among eight people killed when a helicopter crash-landed on Thursday in a mountainous area near the capital, Taipei, the defence ministry has said. The chief of general staff, air force general Shen Yi-ming, died in the incident while five of the 13 people onboard survived, the military. The defence ministry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2904,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2902"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2902"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2905,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2902\/revisions\/2905"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}