Dozens of people were killed on Friday when a packed train derailed inside a tunnel in eastern Taiwan, the island's worst railway accident in decades.

Four retired Taiwanese military intelligence officers -- including a major general -- have been indicted for spying for China, prosecutors said Saturday.

Taiwan's de facto ambassador to the US was formally invited to President Joe Biden's inauguration in what Taipei said Thursday was a precedent-setting first since Washington switched recognition to Beijing in 1979.

Chinese jets made a record 380 incursions into Taiwan's defence zone last year, a defence official said Tuesday, as a military-linked think-tank warned tensions were now at their highest since the mid-1990s.

The United States has issued an export permit for a digital sonar system critical to Taiwan's indigenous submarine project, a top defence official said Wednesday.

Taiwan on Monday accused two Chinese diplomats of gatecrashing a hotel function hosted by its de facto embassy in Fiji and assaulting an employee.

A United States warship has sailed through the Taiwan Strait, Taipei's defence ministry said Friday, the first such passage since the island resoundingly re-elected its independence-leaning president.

The black box of a Mirage fighter jet that disappeared off Taiwan two years ago has been located and will be sent to France for analysis, the island's airforce announced Thursday. 

A towering arch bridge over a bay in eastern Taiwan collapsed Tuesday, sending an oil tanker truck falling onto boats in the water below. The search for potential victims involved an air force helicopter and more than 60 army and naval personnel, including divers.

Six people are believed trapped on one of the boats, the National Fire Agency said in a statement. Interior Minister Hsu Kuo-yung told reporters about five people were feared to have been on the bridge when it collapsed. Ten people were sent to hospitals, six of them with serious injuries.

China on Friday praised the Pacific island of Kiribati for cutting ties with Taiwan, the second diplomatic defection from Taipei to Beijing in less than a week.