All of the 18 Taiwanese tourists injured in a fatal traffic accident in northeast China Monday were transferred to a higher-level hospital on Tuesday.

All the 18 injured were transferred to the Yanbian Hospital in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin Province to receive better treatment, said Wei Jiuping, director of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the prefecture on Tuesday

Twelve out of the 18 people were injured seriously, including a couple who were transferred to the new hospital Tuesday morning and are still in critical condition, Wei said.

Wang Ying, head of the Wangqing Hospital where the 18 received preliminary treatment, said 69-year-old Yen Wenhsiong suffered compound injures while his 60-year-old wife, Yang Suiying, suffered fractures.

The husband underwent surgery at the Wangqing Hospital before the transfer, Wang said.

A special medical taskforce has been working to save the injured people, Wei said.

The traffic accident occurred at 9:40 a.m. on a highway in Wangqing County when a 20-member Taiwanese tourist group was traveling from Heilongjiang Province to Jilin. Their bus overturned and plunged into a river on the 51-km Laosong Highway.

Two Taiwanese women and the bus driver from the Chinese mainland were killed. The dead tourists were 66-year-old Lee Lin Ching-miao and Leu Hsiu-ching, 62.

The county government had informed the families of all the tourists, and relatives of the two dead were expected to arrive in Wangqing on Tuesday night.

The tourist group was on the second leg of a ten-day tour through the three northeastern provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning.

(Xinhua News Agency September 13, 2006)