The Philippine military accused China’s coast guard of injuring one of its sailors in a scuffle that broke out on Monday in the South China Sea, where the two countries have been locked in a decades-long territorial dispute.
The episode began when an inflatable Chinese coast guard boat approached the Sierra Madre, a beached World War II-era warship that the Philippines uses as a military outpost in a disputed reef, and lashed out at the Philippine sailors who approached in a boat to chase them away, the Armed Forces of the Philippines said in a statement.
The statement added that a Philippine sailor had been struck on the head with a wooden baton in the ensuing struggle, necessitating medical care.
The Philippines’ Department of National Defense decried the incident as another act of “harassment” by the Chinese coast guard that added to a “pattern of provocative and hostile behavior,” in a statement on Monday. “We simply cannot trust this belligerent neighbor.”
The Chinese coast guard has disputed that version of events, saying that the Philippine sailors rammed their patrol boat first before attacking its personnel with “oars, long sticks, and other tools.”
Accusing the Philippines of spreading propaganda, China’s foreign ministry said it had summoned the Philippine ambassador in Beijing over the incident, according to a statement published by state media on Tuesday. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines has done the same to China’s ambassador in Manila.
