A charter plane carrying 14 Taiwan tourists who were injured in a Sept. 11 bus crash took off from Yanji Airport in northeast China's Jilin Province at 7:48 a.m. on Tuesday for Taiwan.

The plane is expected to travel via Hong Kong airspace and arrive at Taipei Airport at 1 p.m., according to sources with International SOS.

The accident occurred at 9:40 a.m. on Sept. 11 on a highway in Wangqing County of Jilin, when a 20-member Taiwanese tourist group were traveling from neighboring Heilongjiang Province to Jilin. The bus first crashed into the protection rail on the highway and then fell 26 meters into a river.

Two Taiwanese women and the bus driver from the Chinese mainland were killed and the 18 other passengers all injured.

Three of the injured, 69-year-old Yen Wenhsiong, 66-year-old Tseng Mingmei and 60-year-old Yang Suiying, who were in a critical condition, were transferred to Beijing for further treatment.

The fourth injured person, 66-year-old Lee Chunchang, who was confirmed to be in a "good enough condition to take a plane", left for Taiwan on Saturday with his wife's remains. The remains of the other dead tourists were sent back to Taiwan last Friday.

The remaining 14 injured received medical treatment in two local hospitals in Yanji, capital of the Korean Autonomous Prefecture of Yanbian.

Charles Van Reenen, medical supervisor-in-chief of the North Asia branch of International SOS, organizer of the transfer mission, conducted checkups on all the injured Taiwan tourists after he arrived in Yanji City on Monday night.

Mr Reenen concluded that their condition was good enough to allow them to make the flight home where they will undergo further treatment.

The transfer mission was undertaken by a team of six medical doctors from Beijing, Taiwan and Hong Kong, eight nurses and two helpers.

(Xinhua News Agency September 19, 2006)