STUDENTS INJURED: Many of the 25 injured in Thursday's Songshan train carriage blast were school students, two of whom remain in intensive care
By Lee I-chia and Sean Lin / Staff reporters
Twenty-five people injured in an explosion on a train traveling to Songshan Railway Station on Thursday night were taken to six different hospitals in the city for emergency treatment, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday.
As of press time last night, 10 had been discharged.
Of the 25 injured, six were taken to Taipei City Hospital's Zhongxiao Branch, five to Taipei Medical University Hospital （TMUH）, four to the Tri-Services General Hospital in Neihu District （內湖）, two to Cathay General Hospital, three to Chang Gung Memorial Hospital and five to Tri-Services General Hospital in Songshan District （松山）.
Six people were taken to intensive care units — one at Taipei City Hospital's Zhongxiao Branch, two at Tri-Services General Hospital in Neihu District and three at TMUH.
TMUH yesterday morning said that three patients who were seriously injured were still being treated in the intensive care unit, including a 55-year-old man who had been intubated after inhalation injuries and second to third-degree burns over 13 percent of his body. The man was later identified by police as a likely suspect in the case.
A 39-year-old man with second-degree burns covering his hands and knees, totaling between 10 and 15 percent of his body, and a 37-year-old woman with hearing damage and second-degree burns on her legs, totaling about 15 percent of her body, remained in intensive care, TMUH deputy superintendent Huang Tsung-jen （黃聰仁） said.
A 14-year-old boy with burns covering 30 percent of his body was in intensive care at Taipei City Hospital's Zhongxiao Branch. The patient was conscious with stable vital signs, hospital chief medical officer Hong Shih-chi （洪士奇） said.
Tri-Services General Hospital in Neihu District said its patients in intensive care were a 24-year-old man with second-degree burns covering 20 percent of his body, who had also been intubated because of inhalation injuries, and a 17-year-old boy with second-to-third-degree burns on his limbs that covered 18 percent of his body.
Chang Gung Memorial Hospital said its three patients were all discharged.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je （柯文哲） visited Taipei City Hospital's Zhongxiao Branch to check on those injured in the blast, which occurred at about midnight on Thursday night.
Ko said the city's emergency medical care capacity is sufficient to take care of the needs of the injured passengers, adding that the Taipei Department of Social Welfare has deployed workers to all hospitals and that they would be available to all injured passengers and their families.
He said the city government would increase its patrols on the Mass Rapid Transit （MRT） System in the coming days.
The Taipei Police Department said it had added 94 officers to its usual MRT staffing levels at stations and in commuter carriages.
Officers were divided into three brigades and deployed at 12 major MRT stations, including Taipei City Hall, Zhongxiao Fuxing, Zhongshan, Ximen, Gongguan and Taipei Main Station, the department said.
It said it had also asked the New Taipei City Police Department to reinforce its patrols at MRT stations.
The Ministry of Education said that eight students and one school employee were among those injured.
Two students are from Taipei Municipal Chenggong Senior High School, two from Taipei Municipal Xingya Junior High School, one from New Taipei City Municipal Xiufeng High School, one from National Keelung Girls' Senior High School, one from the Taipei College of Maritime Technology and one from New Taipei City's Jinshan Elementary School Affiliated Kindergarten, as well as an employee at New Taipei City's Yu Chang Technical and Vocational Senior High School, the ministry said.
Snipers operating from rooftops in Dallas killed five police officers and wounded seven others in a coordinated attack during one of several protests across the US against the killing of two black men by police this week.
Police described Thursday night's ambush as carefully planned and executed, and said they had taken three people into custody before a fourth died. Dallas-based media said the suspect died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after a standoff that extended into yesterday morning.
The fourth suspect exchanged gunfire with police during the standoff at a downtown garage and warned of placing bombs throughout the city. Police have not confirmed his death, but said no explosives have been found.
The attack came in a week that two black men were fatally shot by police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and outside Minneapolis. The killings, both now the subject of official investigations, inflamed tensions about race and justice in the US.
The shots rang out as a protest in Dallas was winding down, sending marchers screaming and running in panic through the city's streets.
It was the deadliest day for police in the US since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
A total of 12 police officers and two civilians were shot during the attack, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings told CBS News. Three of the officers who were shot were women, he said.
Rawlings said the people in custody, including one woman, were "not being cooperative" with police investigators. He said the assailant who was dead was being fingerprinted and his identity checked with federal authorities.
Police were still not certain they knew all of the individuals involved in the attack, he said.
No motive has been given for the shootings at the downtown protest, one of many held in major cities across the nation on Thursday. New York police made more than a dozen arrests on Thursday night, while protesters briefly shut down one of Chicago's main arteries.
One of the dead officers was identified as Brent Thompson, 43. He was the first officer killed in the line of duty since Dallas Area Rapid Transit formed a police department in 1989, DART said on its Web site.
Dallas Police Chief David Brown said the shooters, some in elevated positions, used rifles to fire at the officers in what appeared to be a coordinated attack.
"[They were] working together with rifles, triangulating at elevated positions in different points in the downtown area where the march ended up going," Brown told a news conference, adding that a civilian was wounded.
US President Barack Obama, who was in Warsaw for a NATO summit, expressed his "deepest condolences" to Rawlings on behalf of the American people.
"I believe I speak for every single American when I say that we are horrified over these events and we are united with the people and police department in Dallas," he said.
Obama said the FBI was in contact with Dallas police and that the federal government would provide assistance.
"We still don't know all of the facts. What we do know is that there has been a vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement," he said.
Dallas police respond after shots were fired during a protest on Thursday over recent fatal shootings by police in Louisiana and Minnesota. Photo: The Dallas Morning News via AP
A mother tries to calm her daughter on Thursday, as Dallas police respond to shots being fired during a protest over recent fatal shootings by police in Louisiana and Minnesota. Photo: The Dallas Morning News via AP
'MALICIOUS': Police identified Lin Ying-chang, a house painter with a record of minor crimes, as the suspect, saying Lin was injured while holding the bomb after assembling it
By Jason Pan / Staff reporter
Authorities yesterday said they have identified a suspect in Thursday's Taipei train explosion, adding that preliminary findings have ruled out a terror attack.
The explosion, which occurred at about 10pm on Thursday in the sixth carriage of a commuter train as it headed into Songshan Railway Station （松山車站）, injured 25 passengers.
Office of Homeland Security officials mobilized at the Songshan Railway Station to assist in the investigation.
After visiting the victims in hospital yesterday, Premier Lin Chuan （林全） said that initial findings indicated the explosion was a "malicious incident."
"It was not an organized attack, but a major breach of public security by one individual," he said, adding that he has asked authorities to get to the bottom of the case.
Sources cited three reasons for the government to discount links to terrorist organizations: information provided by the National Security Bureau showed there was no claim of responsibility by an organization or an individual; there also was no intelligence from at home or abroad to indicate international terrorists were entering Taiwan, nor were there indications of local terrorist cells operating within the nation; and the bomb was a small device that fits the pattern of ordinary criminal activities.
Investigators from the National Police Agency's Criminal Investigation Bureau （CIB） worked through the night to examine the evidence and gather fingerprints at the carriage explosion site, including broken metal canister sections, along with a bag containing tools and tapes thought to have been left by the suspect.
Investigators said the device was a crudely made homemade pipe bomb, which suggested the suspect had learned how to make it from instructions on the Internet.
Witnesses said they saw a fireball following a loud explosion, then smoke filled the carriage, with many passengers sustaining burns and cuts, before receiving first aid and being rushed to hospitals for further treatment.
After an initial investigation, the police yesterday identified Lin Ying-chang （林英昌） — one of six people who were seriously injured — as the probable suspect.
Lin Ying-chang, a 55-year-old resident of New Taipei City with prior convictions for minor crimes, is in intensive care and is unable to speak for the time being, the police said, adding that further investigation is needed to identify a motive.
After speaking with several witnesses to the explosion and collecting and analyzing the evidence on the scene, police said Lin Ying-chang, who was divorced and worked as a house painter and did various manual odd jobs, was believed to be holding the bomb when it went off.
The explosive device, which was a 47cm-long pipe bomb, was broken in two by the explosion, with one part found on the train by investigators, and the other found later on the tracks, a senior CIB forensics official told a news conference at 6pm.
CIB investigators found that the steel tube would have been able to contain between 500g and 1,000g of gunpowder, the forensics official said.
Wang Pao-chang （王寶章）, chief of the Railway Police Bureau's Taipei branch, told the news conference that it was likely the bomb had detonated by accident, as Lin Ying-chang allegedly assembled the materials in the washroom at the end of the carriage, based on witnesses who later identified Lin Ying-chang carrying the metal canister and said he was acting strangely.
"The fingerprints and DNA from Lin [Ying-chang] also matched those found on what was left of the bomb device and the tools," Wang added.
CIB Forensic Examination Division head Yeh Chia-yu （葉家瑜） presented other evidence, including photographs of Lin Ying-chang's blood-soaked, torn clothing, which indicated he sustained burns to his chest, limbs and groin, apparently from a direct blast impact at close distance, which were consistent with witness accounts of Lin carrying the canister device when it exploded.
Police have contacted Lin Ying-chang's son and his ex-wife for questioning, and found an abandoned car in Nantou County, which they believe was left by Lin before he went to Taipei on Thursday.
Presidential Office spokesman Alex Huang （黃重諺） said the National Security Council has left the investigation after relevant government agencies ruled out terrorism.
Huang said the council immediately initiated a contingency response mechanism after the blast.
"In addition to maintaining close contact with the National Security Bureau and the Executive Yuan's Office of Homeland Security to grasp the latest development, the council's deputy secretaries-general and relevant officials had stayed at the council since the blast," Huang said, adding that the council briefed President Tsai Ing-wen （蔡英文） regularly on the latest developments.
Police yesterday inspect the train car at Taipei's Songshan Railway Station in which an explosion occurred on Thursday evening. Photo provided by Taiwan Railways Administration
Wang Pao-chang of the Taipei branch of the Railway Police Bureau, left, talks to the media yesterday, while an assistant holds up a picture of a red bag found on the train that could contain DNA or other clues leading to the perpetrator. Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
Members of the Aviation Police Bureau's SWAT team patrol the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport yesterday following an explosion at Taipei's Songshan Railway Station on Thursday evening. Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
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