Jul 21. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Taiwanese authorities reported on Sunday that they have detected the presence of 22 fighter planes and eight ships of the Chinese Armed Forces in the vicinity of the island in the context of the escalation of tensions between the parties.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense said that at around 6 a.m. local time, eight ships and 22 aircraft were registered around Taiwan, and that 15 of them crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait and entered the island’s air defense identification zone from the north, southwest and east.
The country’s armed forces have been monitoring the situation and have “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 in Beijing have repeatedly said 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 restored only at a business and informal level in the late 1980s.
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