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Flashpoint Reef
The incident follows a series of increasingly tense confrontations between Manila and Beijing, which claims much of the South China Sea and occupied the shoal following a 2012 standoff with the Philippines.
In June, the Philippine military said a sailor Ren’ai Reef standoffIn another area of the South China Sea, China’s coast guard also confiscated or destroyed Philippine equipment, including guns.
Beijing has blamed Manila for the escalation and insisted its actions were legal and proportionate to protect its claims.
After the conflict at the Second Thomas Shoal, the two countries reached a “temporary arrangement” to use a dilapidated warship stranded on the Second Thomas Shoal to provide supplies to the Philippine military and increase communication lines to resolve the waterway dispute.
The Chinese Air Force’s action on Thursday came a day after China conducted combat patrols near Scarborough Shoal to test the “strike capability” of its forces.
Huangyan Island is an archipelago consisting of a series of triangular reefs and rocks, located 240 kilometers west of the main island of Luzon in the Philippines and about 900 kilometers from Hainan Island, the nearest major continent of China.
Despite last week’s incident, the Philippines said on Sunday it would continue patrolling its exclusive economic zone, which is defined under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea as waters beyond a coastal state’s territorial waters over which it has sovereign rights to explore and exploit natural resources.
“The Armed Forces of the Philippines reiterates our resolve to conduct regular surveillance operations in accordance with international law,” military spokesman Francel Padilla told local radio station DZBB.
She added: “We will safeguard the sovereignty and security of our country’s waters.”
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