The Philippines claims that China fired missiles just meters from its aircraft

The plane was flying near Subi Reef, a “militarized” island in the disputed Spratly Islands, when it noticed the eruptions, the statement said.

A similar incident occurred on August 19, when a Chinese jet “engaged in irresponsible and dangerous maneuvers” and fired missiles “at a dangerously close distance of approximately 15 meters to the BFAR Grand Caravan aircraft,” it continued.

“The Chinese fighter jet was not provoked, but its actions demonstrated dangerous intent that endangered the safety of personnel on board the BFAR aircraft,” the statement added.

It follows an agreement between China and the Philippines in July that was aimed at reducing tensions over the second Thomas Shoal, another reef in the Spratly Islands.

China claims sovereignty over the second Thomas Shoal – and most of the South China Sea – but an international tribunal ruled in 2016 that Beijing’s claims to the waters within it “the nine-dash line’ had no legal basis.

The Philippines asserted its claim to the reef in 1999 when it deliberately grounded the BRP Sierra Madre there.

Since then, the reef has repeatedly been a flashpoint in relations between the countries and has been at the center of a series of increasingly intense clashes between the pair.

In May, the International Crisis Group said that “relations between the two countries in the maritime domain have never been as volatile as they have been in the past seven months.”

In early July, Beijing docked the world’s largest coast guard ship in Manila’s exclusive economic zone, which Tarriela called “an intimidation by the Chinese Coast Guard.”