Taiwan Plane Crash Toll Rises to 82

Published November 5th, 2000 - 02:00 GMT
Al Bawaba
Al Bawaba

The death toll from the crash of a Singapore Airlines jet at Taiwan's international airport rose to 82 Sunday, doctors said. 

The Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital identified the latest victim as Lin Ming-liang, a Taiwanese who had been hospitalized with five other passengers for severe burns resulting from the air crash. 

The latest death takes the number of Taiwanese killed to 26. 

Singapore Airlines flight SQ006 with 179 people on board, including 20 crew, crashed at Chiang Kai Shek airport during a typhoon on Tuesday. 

The air carrier on Saturday offered 400,000 US dollars to families of each of the victims and said it would pay the medical expenses of injured passengers and crew and discuss further compensation with them. 

The airline had acknowledged that "pilot error" put the ill-fated jumbo on the closed 05R runway but questioned whether this mistake had been influenced by misleading lighting and asked why the closed runway was not blocked off. 

Taiwan's aviation chief on Saturday denied that the airport's safety facilities were inadequate and had contributed to the crash. 

Of the other victims, 24 are Americans, 11 Singaporeans, 10 Indians, four Malaysians, two British, one Indonesian, one Japanese, one Filipino, one Vietnamese and one Dutch, according to SIA -- TAIPEI (AFP)  

 

 

© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)

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