TAIWAN- The authorities of Taiwan reported this Saturday that they detected the presence of 30 fighters and seven ships of the Armed Forces of China in the vicinity of the island in the context of escalating tensions between the parties.
Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said seven ships and 30 aircraft were reported to be around Taiwan at around 6 a.m. local time, and that 20 of them crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait and entered the island’s air defense identification zone from the southwest and southeast.
The country’s armed forces monitored the situation and “responded accordingly,” authorities said on social media.
The situation around Taiwan has worsened since last year, following a visit by former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which was followed by a visit to Washington by a Taiwanese delegation.
Chinese authorities have repeatedly reiterated in Beijing that Taiwanese independence will not be tolerated and that they will not rule out the use of force to prevent secession. Ties between China and Taiwan, which it considers another province under its sovereignty, were severed in 1949 after the forces of the nationalist Kuomintang suffered a defeat in the civil war against the Communist Party and moved to the archipelago. Relations were re-established only at a business and informal level in the late 1980s.
Source: With information from Europa Press