At a local government office, people switched off their lights and dove under tables. Others fled to an underground car park. At a nearby hospital, staff rushed to treat people staggering in with bloody injuries.

Separately, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi starts a three-nation visit to Europe on Friday. He will be going to Austria, Slovenia and Poland.

China said on Wednesday Taiwan was "blaspheming" the sacrifices of those who died fighting Japan in World War Two by denying the pivotal role of the communist party and denounced Taipei's call for Taiwanese to stay away from Beijing's commemorations.

Taiwan will issue new security guidelines next week in an updated civil defence handbook that, for the first time, will instruct citizens on what to do if they see enemy soldiers and clarifies that any claims of Taiwan's surrender should be considered false.

Another World War II-era unexploded bomb was found at a construction site of TSMC's new semiconductor factory in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

Taiwanese coast guard captain Juan Chung-ching's patrol boat moves across the Taiwan Strait, scanning for threats to what Taipei says is the newest target of China's grey-zone warfare: undersea cables vital to the democratic island's communications.

Filipinos are a distant third in overall migrant worker population. Indonesia has over 248,000 workers, followed by roughly 240,000 Vietnamese. It should be noted that there are another 170,000 Vietnamese in Taiwan married to locals. Hence, roughly 1 in every 33 Taiwanese residents is southeast Asian.