A Taiwanese couple who were seriously injured in a fatal traffic accident in northeast China on Monday has been transferred to a higher-level hospital.

Local government sources said on Tuesday that the husband and wife had been sent to a hospital affiliated to the government of the Korean Autonomous Prefecture of Yanbian, in Jilin Province.

Wang Ying, head of the People's Hospital of Wangqing County, said 69-year-old Yen Wenhsiong suffered compound injures while his 60-year-old wife, Yang Suiying, suffered fractures.

Before the transfer, they had received treatment at the People's Hospital, where Yen had undergone surgery, said Wang.

Another Taiwanese tourist, Kao Kuoho, remained in a critical condition after an operation on Monday afternoon and would stay there for further observation.

The traffic accident occurred at 9:40 a.m. on a highway in Wangqing County when a 20-member Taiwanese tourist group was traveling from Heilongjiang Province to Jilin. Their bus overturned and plunged into a river on the 51-km Laosong Highway.

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

The county government had informed the families of all the tourists and relatives of the two dead women were expected to arrive in Wangqing on Tuesday night, said Wei Jiuping , director of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the Korean Autonomous Prefecture of Yanbian.

"The local government has set up a mobile phone link for the injured to talk to their families," he said.

The tourist group was on the second leg of a ten-day tour through the three northeastern provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning.

(Xinhua News Agency September 12, 2006)