Filipino military personnel ‘fought with bare hands’ following collision with Chinese Coast Guard vessel

The US, Canada and Australia have all spoken out in support of the Philippines. They've been critical of China after a confrontation between Filipino forces and the Chinese Coast Guard. New details have emerged about the incident which happened on the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea Monday. CN NS Ivan Watson live in Hong Kong with more details on this. So what appears to be a collision between a Chinese vessel and the Filipinos, There are now more details about what actually happened on that island. Yeah. I mean, initially we were getting accusations from the Philippine government and armed forces accusing the Chinese Coast Guard of acts of piracy and of injuring a number of Filipino personnel. Well, then we've seen some footage heavily edited, released by the Philippine Armed Forces, which really do show what is clearly an escalation in months of confrontations where you have small Chinese boats surrounding, swarming a small Philippine boat. And at times we see a helmeted, uniformed Chinese personnel wielding axes striking the Philippine vessel, taking at least one bag off the Philippine vessel. The Philippine Armed Forces say one of their sailors actually lost the finger in what took place here. The Chinese government is denying that it engaged in anything illegal here. Take a listen to a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry. China urges the Philippines to immediately stop its infringing and provocative actions. China will continue to resolutely safeguard its sovereignty and rights in accordance with the law. So China's actually accused the Philippines of trying to smuggle weapons and construction materials to this little outpost it has on a rusting grounded ship in this contested Shoal. The area that is under dispute. It has been disputed between China and the Philippines really for years. But the confrontations have escalated over the course of the past couple of months. John. I was on board a Philippine Coast Guard ship and I saw how Chinese, these Coast Guard ships and maritime militia swarmed. The smaller number of Philippine vessels maneuvered very dangerously and just how tense it truly is. But what we're seeing in this footage is clearly an escalation. And the Philippine president has warned that if this leads to the death of a Filipino, it would be essentially an act of war. Take a listen if a Filipino citizen is killed by a willful act that that is, I think very, very close to what we define as an act of war. Now, the concern here, of course, not only is there the risk of a flashpoint and a new conflict in the South China Sea, but also Manila's treaty ally is the US and the US repeats that its commitment to this mutual defense treaty is ironclad. So, you know, map out the scenario if something were to escalate even further and it raises some very big implications. John and I would just very quickly explain why Manila leaves this small number of Filipino marines or armed forces. There's one number of personnel like on this, you know one part of the Spratly Islands what their role actually is great. Well, China claims almost all of the South China Sea for itself almost to the to the coastline of the Philippines. This Shoal is much closer to to the Philippines than it is to mainland China. More than a decade ago, the Filipinos to to claim this particular Shoal. They grounded an old World War Two era ship on that on that Shoal and plant planted some marines on there. They try to run resupply missions to that ship and that's where the the Chinese vessels and Armada come in and they try to intercept and stop that. And so that is that is the dispute point. There has been an international tribunal that has ruled in favour of the Philippines in this territorial dispute. China basically rejects that completely. Ivan Watson, we appreciate the reporting. We appreciate. We appreciate the background information as well. Thank you. Ivan Watson live in Hong Kong.