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BEIJING: China’s Coast Guard fired water cannon on Tuesday at Philippine ships near the disputed Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea, accusing Manila of an “illegal” intrusion and the ramming of one of its vessels.
The confrontation comes a week after China approved plans to turn the shoal into a national nature reserve, a move that defense analysts have warned would test Manila’s response over the 150 square-kilometer triangular chain of reefs and rocks.
Simmering tension over the shoal has led to diplomatic rows in recent years, but no incidents have escalated into armed conflict at the site.
Both sides accuse each other of provocations and trespassing in incidents featuring use of water cannon, boat-ramming and maneuvers by China’s Coast Guard the Philippines regards as dangerously close, as well as jets shadowing Philippine aircraft there.
Tuesday’s encounter involved more than 10 Philippine ships, said Gan Yu, a spokesperson for China’s Coast Guard, accusing the vessels of having “illegally invaded China’s territorial waters of the Scarborough Shoal from different directions.”
In particular, he faulted Philippine Coast Guard vessel 3014, saying in a statement it had “disregarded solemn warnings from the Chinese side and deliberately rammed a Chinese coast guard vessel.”
He added, “The China coast guard lawfully implemented control measures against the Philippine ships.”
These included measures such as verbal warnings, route restrictions and water cannon spraying, Gan added.
A spokesperson for the Philippine Maritime Council said the Chinese coast guard’s statement contained “no truth,” dismissing it as “another case of Chinese disinformation and propaganda.”
Analysts have said Beijing’s plan to categorize the shoal as a nature reserve amounted to trying to take the moral high ground in the dispute over the atoll, known as Huangyan Island in China and Panatag Shoal in the Philippines.
The dispute is part of a contest over sovereignty and fishing access in the South China Sea, a conduit for more than $3 trillion of annual ship-borne commerce.
China claims almost the entire South China Sea, overlapping the exclusive economic zones of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. Unresolved disputes have festered for years over ownership of various islands and features.
In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague ruled that China’s sweeping claims in the region were not supported by international law, a decision that Beijing rejects.

RIVNE/LONDON: US-funded research has identified more than 210 sites where Ukrainian children have been taken for military training, drone manufacturing and other forced re-education by Russia, as part of a large-scale deportation program.
Yale’s School of Public Health said in a report published on Tuesday that more than 150 new locations had been discovered since it published findings last year, when it alleged that Russian presidential aircraft had been used to transport children.
The latest research by Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL), based on open-source information and satellite imagery, said roughly half of the locations are managed by the Russian government.
It “represents the highest number of locations to which children from Ukraine have been taken that has been published to date,” the report said. “The actual number is likely higher, as there are multiple sites still under investigation by HRL and additional locations may exist that have not yet been identified.”
Ukraine says Russia has illegally deported or forcibly displaced more than 19,500 children to Russia and Belarus in violation of the Geneva Conventions. In June, Yale estimated that figure could be closer to 35,000.
Russia denies it is taking children against their will and says it has been evacuating people voluntarily to remove them from the war zone.
The Kremlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest report.
Yale researchers “can conclude that Russia is operating a potentially unprecedented system of large-scale re-education, military training, and dormitory facilities capable of holding tens of thousands of children from Ukraine for long periods of time,” the latest report said.
Yale’s program, which has been defunded by the administration of US President Donald Trump, had previously tracked 314 Ukrainian children to Russian-government websites, where they were put up for adoption by Russian families.
The number of Ukrainian children taken and the network of facilities where they are being held has jumped since Yale first published findings in 2023, when it estimated 6,000 children had been taken to 43 camps.
The findings underpinned arrest warrants issued in 2023 by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova, accusing them of unlawful deportation of children, a war crime.
“The good news is we now know the scope of what we’re dealing with fully,” Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab, told Reuters. “The bad news is that addressing it, bringing these kids home, depends on absolute total global unity.”
Yale says that since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ukrainian children have been taken to locations spread across 3,500 miles (5,600 km), including cadet schools, a military base, medical facilities, a religious site, secondary schools and universities, orphanages and most frequently, camps and sanatoriums.
Military training of Ukrainian children took place at at least 39 locations and at least 34 of these facilities are newly identified, it said.
Ukrainian children aged eight to 18 were taken to camps and a military base where they underwent militarization programs, including combat training, ceremonial parades and drills, assembly of drones and other materiel, and education in military history.
They also did shooting competitions, grenade throwing competitions, tactical medicine, drone control and tactics training.
In one case Yale detailed children from the Donetsk region receiving “airborne training” at a military base. They were brought to the base on an aircraft managed by the Presidential Property Management Department within the Russian Presidential Administration, it said.
Over 1,600 deported children have returned, Ukraine’s commissioner for human rights said this month. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, wrote on Telegram on Monday that 16 more children had been brought home after spending “years of being under pressure under Russian occupation, in fear and humiliation.”