Chinese Television System (CTS) ran news alerts in Taiwan saying Beijing had launched attacks. On screen, the broadcaster ran alerts including ‘New Taipei City hit by Communist army’s guided missiles’ and ‘Vessels exploded, facilities and ships damaged in Taipei port’.

In a statement, CTS said staff mistakenly put out content from disaster prevention drills.

The station said it commissioned the Chinese attack messages for New Taipei City’s fire department.

CTS added: “CTS news channel cooperated with the New Taipei City government fire bureau to record a disaster prevention video.

“On the 20th, due to a wrong setting by the production staff, we mistakenly flashed the messages from yesterday about the war and disaster prevention. People do not need to panic.”

“CTS offers its sincere apology that this serious flaw has caused panic among the public and trouble to relevant units.”

Other messages ran by the broadcaster included ‘Communist China’s frequent war preparations, the President issued emergency order’ and ‘War could break out, New Taipei City opens joint emergency command and control centre’.

CTS has said it ran corrections and apologies on multiple channels, and added it will “severely punish” those responsible after initiating an internal probe.

In a message posted on its official Facebook page, with a photo of a clarification alert saying, CTS said “don’t panic”.

They added: “CTS mistakenly ran war and disaster prevention message, no need for the public to panic.”

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Chiu Kuo-cheng, Taiwan’s defence minister, said he had been “surprised to see the news”.

Chiu said the army had responded quickly to verify and dispel the erroneous alert.

He added the error was “a good lesson to our journalist friends”.

In China, the error was viewed or discussed by more than a million people on Weibo, under the hashtag: “Taiwan media makes a big own goal.”

Since President Tsai Ing-wen, who views the island as a sovereign country, became leader of Taiwan in 2016, China has ramped up pressure on the country.

In 2021, Taiwan recorded 969 Chinese incursions in its airspace, according to a database compiled by AFP – more than double the roughly 380 in 2020.

The number of sorties reached around 300 in the first four months this year.