A senior mainland official on Taiwan affairs visited on Monday three Taiwanese tourists being treated in Beijing for injuries in a recent bus crash in northeast Jilin Province.

Chen Yunlin, director of the Taiwan Affairs Office of State Council, visited the three seriously injured patients at the Beijing Friendship Hospital, Beijing Union Medical College Hospital and the Sino-Japanese Friendship Hospital.

The three injured are 66-year-old Tseng Mingmei, 60-year-old Yang Suiying and 69-year-old Yen Wenhsiong.

Chen talked with the injured and their families about their needs and thanked medical staff for their hard work in treating the Taiwan tourists.

A treatment team was set up by Beijing medical authorities specifically to treat the three Taiwanese after they were transferred to Beijing

The traffic accident occurred at 9:40 a.m. on Sept. 11 on a highway in Wangqing County when the 20-member Taiwanese tourist group was traveling from Heilongjiang Province to Jilin. The bus crashed through a guardrail on the highway and fell 26 meters into a river.

Two Taiwanese women and the bus driver from the Chinese mainland were killed. The dead tourists were 66-year-old Lee Lin Chingmiao and Leu Hsiuching, 62. The other 18 tourists were all injured.

Fifteen of the injured returned to Taiwan on chartered flights.

(Xinhua News Agency September 26, 2006)