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Vietnam says one of its fishing boats was attacked off the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, which are claimed by China,Taiwan and Vietnam, and all 10 members of its crew were injured, state media reported.
Vietnam published no information about who was responsible for the attack on the boats or how it unfolded.
State media reported that authorities were first alerted just after midday on Sunday to boats being “obstructed and attacked while fishing” near the Hoang Sa archipelago, as Vietnam calls the Paracel Islands.
“Local authorities are coordinating with relevant agencies to continue to verify and clarify the incident,” the chairman of the People’s Committee of Binh Chau Commune in Quang Ngai province, Phung Ba Vuong, was quoted as telling reporters on Monday.
The captain of the fishing boat QNg 95739-TS, Nguyen Thanh Bien, radioed the border guard on Sunday afternoon, telling them that three of his crew suffered broken arms and legs, while the other seven had unspecified injuries.
The captain also asked for help from Vietnam’s regional Maritime Search and Rescue Coordination Center.
Vietnamese officials said the names of the injured were not known. The fishing boat involved in the attack arrived in Sa Ky port on Monday, a source with knowledge of the matter said.
While Vietnam has declined to indicate who might have been responsible for the attack, suspension will inevitably fall on an increasingly assertive China, which claims almost the whole of the South China Sea as its territory, including the Paracel islands, which it calls the Xisha islands.
Neither Chinese authorities nor its media had commented on any incident at time of publication.
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The Paracel Islands, an archipelago of about 130 islands and reefs, lie 400 kilometers (249 miles) off Vietnam’s eastern coast and a similar distance from China’s Hainan island.
Fifty years ago, China seized the islands after the so-called Battle of the Paracels on Jan. 19, 1974, in which 74 Vietnamese soldiers were killed.
The Republic of Vietnam, also known as South Vietnam, at that time claimed sovereignty of the islands but only had a small presence there.
China has occupied and developed the Paracels ever since the battle.
Woody Island is the headquarters of Sansha City, which China established in 2012 to administer all the islands it claims in the South China Sea.
While China claims almost all of the South China Sea, parts of it are also claimed by Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.
Vietnam, while marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Paracels in January, denounced the use of force to settle territorial disputes.
“Every act of threatening or using force in international relations, especially the use of force to resolve territorial disputes between states, is in complete contravention of the fundamental principles of the United Nations Charter, and in serious violation of international law,” Vietnamese government spokesperson Pham Thu Hang said at the time.
Translated by RFA Staff. Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Vietnamese.