Taiwan’s coastguard has detained a cargo ship and its Chinese crew after an undersea cable in the Taiwan Strait was damaged on Tuesday, saying it cannot rule out the possibility it was a deliberate “grey zone” act.
The coastguard said it was alerted in the early hours of Tuesday by Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom company that a communications cable connecting Taiwan’s main island with Penghu, in the Taiwan Strait, had been damaged.
The ship is registered under a Togolese flag, but Taiwan’s coastguard said that was probably a flag of convenience and all eight crew onboard were Chinese nationals.
A cargo ship was identified as being nearby, and a boat from the Taiwan coastguard was sent to monitor it, off the coast of the city of Tainan.
“Whether the cause of the undersea cable breakage was intentional sabotage or a simple accident remains to be clarified by further investigation,” the coastguard said in a statement.
