Three fishermen killed after their boat hit by ‘foreign’ vessel – Philippines

The Philippines is looking into the deaths of three Filipino fishermen who were killed in an accident with a ship from another country in the South China Sea, according to authorities in the country.

The Philippine fishing boat FFB Dearyn was hit around 4:20 in the morning. On Monday, near Scarborough Shoal, the Philippine coast guard said that a crew member reported this information.

Eleven crew members were able to survive the crash. They used their own boats to reach land on Tuesday morning. They brought the bodies, including the captain’s, to Pangasinan province in northern Luzon. The coast guard shared this information.

Filipino President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. , who was previously on X (formerly known as Twitter), wrote a message. The coast guard is going back and checking all the boats they were keeping an eye on in the area because they are investigating something.

Marcos promised that he and his team will do everything they can to make sure the people responsible for the maritime incident are held responsible.

He also requested that everyone not guess or speculate about what happened until the investigation is finished.

In a recent update, the coast guard mentioned that they will contact an oil tanker that belongs to the Marshall Islands, as it might have been near the location where the incident happened. They came to this conclusion after looking at data on marine traffic and hearing accounts from the survivors.

The South China Sea is a very important area for trade between different countries. It is about 1. 3 million square miles in size. Every year, a large amount of global shipping, which is worth trillions of dollars, goes through this area. This means really big ships carrying lots of stuff and ships carrying oil often go through the area.

The ocean has a lot of good places for fishing. Many people rely on these areas for their food and jobs, and they use smaller boats to fish there.

It is also a large area where there are often conflicts on the sea.

China and some Southeast Asian countries both have claims on parts of the sea. China says it owns most of it, even though this goes against a ruling from a court that involves different countries.

In the last twenty years, China has taken control of some faraway reefs and islands in the South China Sea. They have built military structures like runways and ports there.

Scarborough Shoal is a small reef and fishing area that is important for both the Philippines and China. It is located 130 miles (200 kilometers) west of Luzon and is also called Bajo de Masinloc and Huangyan Island. These different names have caused conflict and tension between Manila and Beijing.

In simple words, there have been more and more clashes between boats from the Philippines and small wooden fishing boats from China. The Chinese boats are larger and belong to the coast guard, while the Philippines believes that there are also secretive Chinese fishing boats involved.

In 2016, a very important court in The Hague decided that the Philippines won a big case about the sea. The court said that China doesn’t have the right to say they own most of the South China Sea based on history. Manila claims that Beijing has not followed the decision.