TAIPEI CITY: 2 Indians Reported Missing After Taiwan Earthquake Are Safe: Centre

TAIPEI CITY: Two Indians who were earlier reported missing after a strong earthquake in Taiwan are safe, the foreign ministry said on Thursday.

“Two persons, we were not able to establish contact in the wake of the earthquake there. But now, we have established contact and they are safe,” foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said in his weekly briefing.

The 7.2-magnitude earthquake, which was the strongest to hit Taiwan in about 25 years, struck the island’s mountainous Hualien County during the morning rush hour on Wednesday.

At least 10 people died while a hundred others were injured. A search is still on for over a dozen missing people. Dramatic visuals online showed buildings shaking, bridges swaying and people scrambling for cover. 

Some buildings leaned at severe angles with their ground floors crushed in Hualien. The quake also triggered tsunami warnings in Japan and the Philippines. 

Dozens of aftershocks rocked Hualien overnight, some of which were felt in Taipei, over 150 km away. In the capital city, tiles fell off older buildings and schools were evacuated as part of safety measures.

 Taiwan, which lies near the junction of two tectonic plates, is prone to earthquakes. In 2016, over 100 people died in an earthquake in southern Taiwan while another in 1999 had killed over 2,000 people.