Scores of US and Filipino marines launched mock assaults on a South China Sea beach in the Philippines on Friday, as a row escalates between Beijing and its smaller neighbours over the strategic waters.
The drills, part of annual war games between the two countries, came after Vietnam said its vessels were rammed by Chinese ships protecting a deep-sea oil rig in disputed waters off Vietnam’s coast.
The flare-up - which saw counter-accusations from Beijing which said its own vessels had been repeatedly attacked - sparked concern from Japan, the US, and the European Union about deteriorating security in the region.
The US-Philippine exercises - involving about 5,500 troops - included on Friday’s drills on a beach about 220 kilometres (135 miles) from Scarborough Shoal, which China took control of two years ago after a stand-off with the much-weaker Philippine forces.
Three US rubber raiding craft and two small-unit Filipino riverine boats practised stealth landings from before dawn at the desolate beach inside a northern Philippines navy base.
The teams of about 40 US and 80 Filipino marines scrambled up the sloping shore with assault rifles to surround a mocked-up enemy tent before running back to their boats.
Two Filipino navy ships served as launch pads for the amphibious units.
‘There was no specific scenario,’ US Marines spokesman Captain Jeremy Scheier said when asked if they had an enemy target in mind for the drills.
Filipino Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario said last week that the joint manoeuvres were designed to help the hosts boost their ‘maritime capability’ to address ‘challenges’ in the South China Sea.
China claims sovereignty over almost the whole of the South China Sea, which is also claimed in part by the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei, and Malaysia, and is believed to sit atop vast oil and gas deposits.
The latest flash point has been China’s unilateral decision to move the rig into waters off Vietnam, triggering a serious confrontation between the two countries which fought a brief border war in 1979.
‘We can expect a few more months of high tension between the two countries, and things could get out of hand and shots could be exchanged,’ said Ian Storey, a security expert at Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.