HUALIEN, Taiwan — A Taiwan court on Saturday released on
bond the manager of a construction site whose truck authorities believe to have
caused a train accident that killed at least 50 people, but prosecutors vowed
to appeal.
اضافة اعلان
Friday's crash was Taiwan's worst rail accident in seven
decades, when an express train hit the truck that had slid down a bank beside
the track from the building site, whose manager is suspected of having failed
to properly engage the brake.
The train, with almost 500 people aboard, was travelling
from Taipei, the capital, to Taitung on the east coast when it derailed in a
tunnel just north of the city of Hualien.
Forty people are in hospital, from
among the 178 reported injured.
Prosecutors had applied to a court to detain the manager on
charges of causing death by negligence, a justice ministry official told
reporters on Saturday.
But a court in Hualien released the manager, Lee Yi-hsiang,
on a bond of T$500,000 ($17,525), although it restricted him from leaving
Taiwan for eight months and said he had to stay in Hualien.
The court said that while the truck's fall into the path of
the train was possibly due to negligence, there was "no possibility of
conspiracy".
Yu Hsiu-duan, head of the Hualien prosecutors' office, said
it would appeal against the decision.
"The court said there was no reason to keep him in
custody," she told reporters. "The court changed it to a surety of
$T500,000."
Lee's court-appointed lawyer declined to comment to
reporters as he left the court.
Workers on Saturday began moving the train's rear portion,
which was relatively unscathed as it had stopped outside the tunnel away from
the accident spot.
However, other mangled sections remained in the tunnel,
where fire department official Wu Liang-yun said more bodies were likely to be
found.
"We're still carrying out rescue work," he added.
President Tsai Ing-wen visited hospitals in Hualien to speak
to family members and survivors, thanking ordinary people and non-government
groups for efforts to help.
"This shows the good side of Taiwanese society,"
she said.
The government has ordered flags flown at half mast for
three days in mourning, while the de facto French embassy in Taipei confirmed
that one of its citizens had died in the crash.
Taiwan's foreign ministry said one US citizen was among the
dead and another was missing.
In a rare sign of goodwill from China, which claims Taiwan
as its own territory, President Xi Jinping expressed his condolences over the
crash, state news agency Xinhua said.
The accident happened at the start of a long holiday
weekend. The train was packed with tourists and residents going home for the
traditional Tomb Sweeping Day to clean the graves of ancestors.
Taiwan has no domestic travel curbs as the COVID-19 pandemic
is well under control, with only a handful of active cases in hospital.
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