China simulates attacks on Taiwan again on last day of exercises

Shanghai (China), August 7 (EFE). Taiwan again today denounced the Chinese military’s continued simulated attacks on the island and its navy during what should be the last day of military exercises organized by Beijing in response to the attack. US Congress President Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei.

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said, in a statement posted on its website, that it had detected, on Sunday morning, “multiple groups” of aircraft, ships and drones operating around the Strait of Formosa.

According to the document, Chinese forces will continue to “conduct joint sea and air maneuvers, simulating attacks against the island of Taiwan and against our ships at sea,” while groups of aircraft “invade” other islands controlled by Taipei.

Soon after, the official Chinese news agency (Xinhua) reported that Sunday’s exercises focused on “testing the combined firing capabilities of ground attacks and long-range air attacks.”

Back to normalization tomorrow?

In response, as in recent days, Taiwanese forces deployed their planes and ships after “closely monitoring the enemy’s situation.”

On Saturday evening, the military portfolio identified that up to 20 aircraft and 14 ships of the People’s Liberation Army (EPL, Chinese Army) participated in the exercises around Taiwan during that day.

The ESA’s moves are part of the military exercises it has been conducting since Thursday which is supposed to end today at noon (4:00 GMT) in principle.

Although at the time of this article’s publication, Beijing had not officially confirmed the end, Taiwan’s main Taoyuan airport confirmed that all flights should return to normal tomorrow.

And according to the newspaper, “South China Morning Post” in Hong Kong, which quoted a representative of that airport, more than 900 international flights since last Thursday have had to divert through the Philippines or Japan so as not to fly over the maneuver areas, and more than 200 have been cancelled. .

The maneuvers included live fire and long-range missiles.

The exercises take place in six regions around the island, one of which is located about 20 kilometers off the coast of Kaohsiung, the main city in southern Taiwan.

More military exercises

Although China has conducted other exercises in the Taiwan Strait in recent years, this week’s exercise is different because it “covers a larger area, includes more military elements and is expected to be very effective,” Chinese experts said on the matter. Via local media.

Taiwan has called China’s military presence in those areas a “siege,” and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen called China’s “deliberately growing military threat” “irresponsible.”

China, which described Pelosi’s visit – according to the Cyprus News Agency, the visit of a US official with the highest rank in 25 years – as a “farce” and “a regrettable betrayal”, claims the island’s sovereignty and considers Taiwan a rebel province since the Kuomintang peoples. He withdrew there in 1949, after losing the civil war against the communists.

Beijing on Friday announced several sanctions against Pelosi and her immediate relatives and raised the bar for its response by suspending mechanisms for cooperation with Washington on judicial matters, climate change, repatriation of illegal immigrants, criminal legal assistance or combating cross-border crimes.

The Chinese authorities also revealed, this Saturday, that after the exercises around Taiwan, new military exercises will begin on Monday in parts of the Yellow Sea and the Bohai Sea, which separate the coasts of China and the Korean Peninsula.

The entrance to the waters in which you will be carried out will remain closed until the following fifteenth day, the date on which these new maneuvers will end.

For its part, the Taiwanese forces indicated that they will conduct large-scale live-fire exercises in the south of the island next week. EFE

VEC / amg

EFE 2022. Redistribution and redistribution of all or part of the contents of the EFE Services, without the prior and express consent of Agencia EFE SA, is expressly prohibited.