Tag: Second Thomas Shoal

Philippines Says Sailor Was Injured in Skirmish With Chinese Coast Guard

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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…

Philippine Ship Is an Unlikely Outpost That Is Angering China

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For more than two decades, it has been an unlikely flashpoint in the South China Sea: a rusty, World War II-era ship beached on a tiny reef that has become a symbol of Philippine resistance against Beijing. The Philippine government ran the vessel aground in 1999 on the Second Thomas Shoal, a contested reef 120 miles off the coast of the western province of Palawan. The dilapidated warship, known as the Sierra Madre, will never sail again. But it has remained there ever since, a marker of the Philippines’ claim…