Asia

Home page

Asia

Philippines says three fishermen killed after boat rammed by ‘foreign’ vessel in South China Sea

04 October 2023 05:34 (UTC +04:00)

Three Filipino fishermen have died after an “unidentified commercial vessel” allegedly rammed their fishing boat near Scarborough Shoal, the Philippine coast guard said Wednesday, compounding tensions in a region of the disputed South China Sea that is already a flashpoint, APA reports citing CNN.

The Philippine coast guard said it was working to confirm what type of vessel was involved in the incident but added the boat that caused the collision was “foreign”.

The maritime collision occurred around 4:20 a.m. on Monday, a crew member of FFB Dearyn, the Philippine vessel that was struck, told authorities, according to a coast guard statement.

Eleven crew members survived the crash and used their own service boats to reach land on Tuesday morning, carrying the dead – including the boat’s captain – to Pangasinan province in northern Luzon, the country’s largest island, the statement added.

The South China Sea is a 1.3 million-square-mile waterway that is vital to international trade, with an estimated third of global shipping worth trillions of dollars passing through each year. It’s also home to vast fertile fishing grounds upon which many lives and livelihoods depend on.

Bracketed by China and several Southeast Asian nations, parts of the sea are claimed by multiple governments, with Beijing asserting ownership over almost all of the waterway, in defiance of an international court ruling.

Over the past two decades, China has occupied a number of obscure reefs and atolls far from its shoreline across the South China Sea, building up military installations, including runways and ports.