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Bangladesh's state minister for foreign affairs said on Friday that about 7,500 Bangladeshis are being held in prisons across Saudi Arabia, giving the government's latest public figure as Dhaka presses Riyadh for details of two citizens recently executed.

Shama Obaed Islam spoke at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka after receiving the body of Md Shahed Ahmed, a Bangladeshi worker killed in the 10 October missile attack on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh. The body arrived on a US-Bangla Airlines flight at 8:35am, and the minister handed it to his family.

"Around 7,500 Bangladeshis are in prisons in Saudi Arabia, and the government is working on their cases," she said, according to Bangladesh Pratidin. She said the government and the Bangladesh embassy were monitoring the detainees and providing consular services. She also said Saudi Arabia had not yet supplied fresh information about the two Bangladeshis executed this month.

Nazrul Islam Abdul Basir and Sweety Akter were executed in the Makkah region on 14 October. Saudi Arabia's interior ministry said they had been convicted of "indecent acts" inside a mosque in the holy city, according to Saudi media reports cited by Bangladeshi outlets. Bangladesh says neither the foreign ministry nor its mission in Saudi Arabia was told before the executions or formally notified afterwards.

The disclosure renewed attention to a prisoner list Saudi Arabia's foreign ministry sent to the Bangladesh consulate in Jeddah on 30 September. It named 2,461 Bangladeshi prisoners in the consulate's jurisdiction. Twenty-two were marked as convicted, but the column for the verdict was blank, so the consulate could not tell whether they faced prison terms or death sentences. The consulate wrote to the Saudi foreign ministry on 19 October asking for the verdict summaries.

A confidential consulate document also said 306 Bangladeshis were being held in prisons in western Saudi Arabia on morality-related cases, of whom 147 had been sentenced to between one month and 15 years. The 2,461 figure covered the Jeddah consulate's jurisdiction; the minister did not explain how that list relates to her national figure of about 7,500.

Saudi Arabia is Bangladesh's largest labour market. More than three million Bangladeshi workers are estimated to live there, and their remittances are a pillar of the economy. Workers who run into the law depend on the embassy and consulate for interpreters, lawyers, prison visits and help in contacting families. Rights groups have long warned that many low-paid migrants do not understand Saudi court proceedings or cannot afford legal representation.

Shama said the government had written to the Saudi ambassador in Dhaka about the two executions and was seeking the court documents. She said the bodies of 11 Bangladeshis killed in Middle East conflicts over the past six months had been returned, and that efforts were under way to bring back the rest. Shahed's employer, Saad Al Eissa Contracting Company, deposited 27,395.62 Saudi riyals, about Tk 9 lakh, with the Bangladesh embassy for his unpaid salary and benefits. His family received Tk 35,000 for burial and transport and Tk 50,000 in special assistance, and may receive further compensation.

Several questions remain unanswered. Bangladesh has not published a complete, verified count of its citizens in Saudi prisons, and officials have not explained the gap between the Jeddah list and the national estimate. It is also unclear how many of the detainees have been sentenced, how many are on death row, whether they had legal representation, and whether the two executed Bangladeshis received consular help. Saudi authorities had not replied to the consulate's 19 October request for the verdict summaries, Prothom Alo reported on Thursday.

The immediate test is whether Riyadh sends the verdict summaries the consulate requested. Bangladesh's mission in Jeddah has also asked Saudi Arabia to release prisoners whose terms are complete, consider well-behaved detainees for royal pardon and speed up pending cases. For families in Bangladesh, the practical questions are smaller and harder: where a relative is held, what he or she was convicted of, and when, or whether, they will come home.

Taiwan closed schools, offices and its stock exchange on Friday and cancelled 931 flights as Typhoon Champi passed close to the island's north-east coast, authorities said, reporting one death and 94 injuries.

The person who died was swept away by waves on Liuqiu, a small coral island south-west of the main island, on Thursday, according to Taiwan's disaster authorities. Most of the injuries were caused by traffic accidents and falls, the fire department said. The government said about 1,300 people had been evacuated from mountainous areas.

The transport ministry cancelled all 262 domestic flights and 669 international flights scheduled for Friday. Ferry services and some rail lines were suspended, while the north-south high-speed railway ran as usual and Taipei's metro operated a reduced service. Work and classes were suspended in almost all of Taiwan's 22 counties and cities; only the offshore Kinmen islands opened as normal.

At midday the storm's centre was about 320km east of Taiwan's southern tip, with gusts of about 191kph, the Central Weather Administration said. Its wind radius of roughly 320km was wide enough to cover most of the island, and forecasters warned of up to 900mm of rain in the northern and north-eastern mountains. Parts of Taipei had already recorded more than 200mm in 24 hours.

The CWA expected Champi to pass just off the north-east coast before turning north towards the Chinese coast and eventually moving towards southern Japan. It was forecast to pass first over Yonaguni, Japan's westernmost inhabited island in Okinawa prefecture.

Forecasters differed on whether the centre would reach land. CWA forecaster Liu Pei-teng told Reuters that landfall could not be ruled out if the storm “stalls, loops, or wobbles from side to side” on approach. At a briefing on Thursday, CWA head Lu Kuo-chen said the typhoon would make landfall and envelop the whole island before slowly leaving on 24 and 25 October, according to the BBC. The agency's track shifted as the storm weakened.

In Yilan county, where the storm was expected to pass closest, authorities distributed sandbags and put amphibious vehicles and inflatable rescue boats on standby. “When necessary, the military will come in to help people, including using amphibious vehicles for evacuations or disaster relief,” said Lee Ming-chen, head of the port town of Suao, which has flooded in previous typhoons.

Further south in Hualien, officials urged people living downstream of a landslide dam on Wanli Creek to leave. The dam was holding about five million tonnes of water on Thursday and could breach in the heavy rain, Premier Cho Jung-tai said. Residents were told to stay away from mountains, creeks and beaches even after the storm passes.

The disruption spread beyond Taiwan. Japanese airlines cancelled more than 160 flights, mostly to Okinawa and other southern islands, and Okinawa Electric Power said 3,630 households had lost electricity. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi urged residents to remain alert to storm-force winds, high waves, landslides and storm surges through Saturday. China's meteorological authority issued its lowest-level blue alert, while Zhejiang province raised an orange alert and warned of large waves.

Champi was the strongest storm in the Pacific this year at its peak. On Tuesday it reached maximum sustained winds of about 298kph over the Philippine Sea, the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane, before weakening as it moved north. It is Japan's 30th typhoon of the year, the first time since 2013 that the country has recorded so many, a run scientists link to an unusually strong El Niño.

Taiwan is generally well prepared for typhoons, and its precautions usually keep casualties low. Autumn typhoons are less common than summer ones but do occur. The island's mountains and narrow river valleys make landslides and flash floods the main danger once heavy rain sets in.

Several things remained unclear on Friday afternoon. Officials had not published a full assessment of damage, and the casualty figures could rise as reports arrive from remote districts. It was not yet known whether the centre would cross the coast, how the Hualien dam would hold, or when flight schedules would return to normal. The effect on connecting flights used by travellers from Bangladesh was also not immediately clear.

The CWA said the storm's impact could last nearly two days, with the strongest winds from Friday through Saturday. It was expected to pull away towards southern Japan late on Saturday, after which authorities are likely to lift closures and begin clearing roads and restoring power. Travellers heading to or through Taiwan, Japan and eastern China over the weekend should check with their airlines before setting out.