FLASHPOINT REEF
The incident follows a series of increasingly tense confrontations between Manila and Beijing, which claims most of the South China Sea and seized the shoal after a 2012 standoff with the Philippines.
In June, the Philippine military said one of its sailors lost a thumb in a confrontation off Second Thomas Shoal, in another area of the South China Sea, when the Chinese coastguard also confiscated or destroyed Philippine equipment including guns.
Beijing has blamed the escalation on Manila and maintains its actions to protect its claims are legal and proportional.
Following the Second Thomas Shoal clash, the two countries agreed on a “provisional arrangement” for resupplying Filipino troops based on a decrepit warship grounded atop the reef, and also to increase the number of communication lines to resolve disputes in the waterway.
The Chinese air force action on Thursday came a day after China carried out a combat patrol near Scarborough Shoal to test the “strike capabilities” of its troops.
Scarborough Shoal, a triangular chain of reefs and rocks, is 240km west of the Philippines’ main island of Luzon and nearly 900km from the nearest major Chinese land mass of Hainan.
Despite last week’s incident, the Philippines said on Sunday it will continue to patrol its Exclusive Economic Zone, defined by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea as waters beyond a coastal nation’s territorial seas over which it has sovereign rights to explore and exploit natural resources.
“The Armed Forces of the Philippines reaffirm our determination to conduct regular surveillance operations in line with international law,” military spokesperson Francel Padilla said in an interview over local radio station DZBB.
“We will safeguard our country’s sovereignty and security over our maritime domain,” she added.
