Fourteen Taiwanese patients who were injured during a traffic accident on the mainland are expected to fly directly back to Taiwan on a special chartered plane today.

This will be only the second ever chartered plane carrying injured people to fly directly between the two sides.

The first one occurred last Thursday when a plane flew from Guangzhou to Taiwan. People travelling from Taiwan usually have to stop off in Hong Kong and Macao before continuing on to the mainland.

On September 11, a bus with 20 Taiwanese tourists on board veered off a highway in Wangqing County, Jilin Province, and fell into a river.

Two tourists and the bus driver were killed. The other 18 were injured.

Three of them, Yen Wenhsiong, Tseng Mingmei and Yang Suiying, who were all severely injured, were transferred to Beijing for further treatment. Another has gone back to Taiwan.

The remaining 14 tourists, who have been at Yanbian Hospital in Jilin, will return on the chartered plane today.

The plane, an Airbus A320, which has been chartered by medical provider International SOS, was expected to take off from Taoyuan Airport in Taiwan last night and arrive in Yanji this morning.

It is expected to fly the patients back to Taiwan later today.

Sixteen medical staff, three from the mainland and 13 from International SOS, will also be on board.

Local transportation authorities in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture confirmed that the driver, Li Yong, was fully responsible for the accident after breaching traffic regulations.

Yen Wenhsiong, 69, one of the most seriously injured, who was transferred to the China-Japan Friendship Hospital last Thursday in Beijing, remains in a critical condition, said doctors.

(China Daily September 19, 2006)