The Philippines says one of its boats was damaged during an altercation with Chinese coast guard vessels in a disputed area of the South China Sea Tuesday.
The Philippine Coast Guard issued a statement saying two of its boats were delivering food and fuel to fishermen working near the Scarborough Shoal, a fisheries-rich atoll seized by China in 2012 despite it being inside the Philippines' 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone. Video footage taken by a news crew from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on board one of the ships shows the other ship blasted with water cannons by two of the Chinese ships. The Philippine ship sustained damage to its railing and canopy.
The Philippine coast guard says China has installed a floating barrier across the entrance to the shoal.
The Chinese coast guard says it expelled the two Philippine vessels, which Manila denies.
Tuesday’s incident was the latest confrontation between coast guard vessels from China and the Philippines near disputed reefs in the South China Sea in recent months. Manila says one of its ships was damaged and four crewmen injured back in March during a mission to deliver supplies and a fresh rotation of troops to a Philippine warship intentionally grounded on the Second Thomas Shoal to maintain the archipelago’s claims on the submerged reef.
China has claimed sovereignty over nearly the entire South China Sea, ignoring competing claims by regional neighbors including the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.
An international arbitration tribunal in the Hague said in 2016 that China's claims had no legal basis - a decision Beijing has rejected.
Some information for this report came from Reuters, Agence France-Presse.
