BEIJING – Typhoon Megi smashed into the Chinese mainland Wednesday morning, killing one person, after leaving a trail of destruction and four people dead in Taiwan.

More than 500 people were hurt when the storm raked across the island, including eight Japanese tourists whose bus was blown over. One remains in a critical condition.

Megi hit China with winds of around 120 kilometres (75 miles) an hour, dumping heavy rain, according to the official Xinhua news service.

Local media reports from the coastal province of Fujian said one man died after a flash flood tore through his home.

Schools were shuttered across the province and train services cancelled, Xinhua reported.

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Typhoon Megi hits Taiwan

Source:

AFP

Reuters

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The main damage from the storm was in Taiwan, where schools and offices were shut for a second day after Megi left roads blocked by landslides and homes flooded.

The four deaths on the island included a man killed by falling scaffolding and a 17-year-old boy who drowned when his boat overturned.

Around 4,300 people remained in temporary shelters with more than 14,800 evacuated from their homes, according to Taiwan’s Central Emergency Operation Centre.

At its peak, Megi knocked out power for close to 3.8 million households, the second worst on record after the outage caused by Typhoon Soudelor in August 2015.

A million households were still without power on Wednesday.

“Fallen trees and signboards brought down many power lines and electrical poles, leading to severe power outages across the island,” Taiwan Power Company said.

Authorities were rushing to clear blocked roads Wednesday, including those leading to mountainous villages in the popular hot springs town of Wulai.

Wulai, one of the areas worst hit by Soudelor, had evacuated 200 residents ahead of the storm.

“The river swelled and flooded the old street, damaging basements of some homes,” Shen Hui-kang, a spokesman at Wulai’s district office, told AFP.

Mountainous areas across Taiwan have been lashed by torrential rains, with some parts of northeast Yilan county getting 1.3 metres (51 inches) since Monday.

Nearly 300 flights were either cancelled or delayed Wednesday and trains were still halted. They are set to resume later in the day.

Megi hit as parts of the island were still recovering from Typhoon Meranti earlier this month, the strongest storm on the island for 21 years.

Meranti, which left one dead in Taiwan before killing another 28 as it moved to eastern China, was followed closely by the smaller Typhoon Malakas.

JAKARTA – Rescuers in Indonesia were dispatched Wednesday to evacuate nearly 400 tourists, most of them foreigners, after a volcano erupted at one of the country’s most popular hiking destinations, an official said.

Mount Barujari began erupting late Tuesday afternoon, sending columns of ash and smoke shooting 2 kilometres (1.2 miles) into the sky over Lombok island, a tourist hotspot to the immediate east of Bali.

Nearly 400 people were recorded as hiking near Barujari – a smaller cone within the crater of Mount Rinjani – when it began erupting, prompting plans for their immediate evacuation, said national disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho.

“A rescue team has been sent to Mount Rinjani to evacuate the tourists. They set off on Wednesday morning,” he said.

Hikers have been told to keep at least 3 kilometres from the smouldering volcano, a key attraction on the multi-day trek to the summit of Mount Rinjani made by thousands of tourists every year.

Nugroho said 389 hikers were recorded as having entered the national park since Sunday, the overwhelming majority of them foreigners.

While most would have taken the official route to the summit, rescue teams suspected some hikers may have gone off-piste, Nugroho added.

The threat level of the volcano was upgraded Tuesday as Barujari sent plumes of smoke and hot ash into the atmosphere, but remains two steps from the highest-risk category.

There were no flight disturbances recorded on Wednesday due to the ash clouds, transport ministry spokesman Hemi Pramuraharjo told AFP.

Some flights to and from the nearby resort island of Bali were cancelled overnight, but Lombok’s international airport remains unaffected.

Flight disruptions due to drifting ash clouds are not uncommon in Indonesia, which sits on a belt of seismic activity known as the Pacific Ring of Fire and is home to 130 active volcanoes.

An eruption at Mount Rinjani last month forced the closure of Lombok airport and disrupted some flights to neighbouring Bali.

BANGKOK – International human rights group Amnesty International on Wednesday accused Thailand’s military government of allowing a “culture of torture” to flourish since the army seized power in a 2014 coup.

The military took power in Southeast Asia’s second-biggest economy after months of street protests against a populist government, saying it had to step in to prevent violence and restore order.

It rejects accusations of rights violations and a government spokesman said on Wednesday investigations into allegations of torture had found no evidence of any such abuse.

Since the coup, dozens of government critics have been held in military detention, although the exact number has not been released.

Amnesty International said in a report it had documented 74 cases of alleged torture at the hands of soldiers and police, and post-coup decrees had allowed authorities to detain people incommunicado.

The group cited allegations of beatings, smothering with plastic bags, waterboarding and electric shocks on detainees by authorities. “Empowered by laws of their own making, Thailand’s military rulers have allowed a culture of torture to flourish, where there is no accountability for the perpetrators and no justice for the victims,” said Rafendi Djamin, Amnesty International’s director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

The government denied accusations of torture, said General Sansern Kaewkamnerd, spokesman in the Prime Minister’s Office. “Our investigations into such allegations have shown no indication of torture, I have seen no indication of torture and the Thai people have seen no indication of torture,” Sansern told Reuters.

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AFP, Reuters

LAUNCH CALLED OFF

Amnesty International was due to hold a news conference at a Bangkok hotel to release the report.

But minutes before the event, men wearing jackets with tags identifying them as Ministry of Labour officials, accompanied by police, said the speakers could face arrest under labour laws.

In response, organisers cancelled the launch, Omar Waraich, media manager for Amnesty International in Asia, told Reuters. “We are here on business visas, we have an office in Thailand, we are not singling out the Thai government,” Waraich, said, adding that Amnesty had received no communication from the government on the report or the launch.

In March, the government gave soldiers powers of arrest and detention saying there were not enough police to tackle crime. Rights groups said the powers would only help strengthen a crackdown on critics.

Thailand came under fire in May at a U.N. review of its rights record with some member states expressing concern over the rights situation.

Amnesty said torture tactics were encouraged by “legal incentives”, including martial law, which the military ditched in 2015 and replaced with Article 44 of an interim constitution which gives the military similar powers to those it had during martial law, and which critics have dubbed a “dictator law”.

A junta order issued in April 2015 allows the military to detain people for up to seven days without charge.

Junta chief Prayuth Chan-ocha, who is also prime minister, has frequently defended the 2014 coup saying it was necessary to bring order back after years of on-off political unrest.

He has promised an election will be held next year.

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