Philippine fishing boat sunk by Chinese ship

Photo by the Philippine Star. Sketched by the Pan Pacific Agency.

MANILA, Jun 18, 2019, PhilStar. The Vietnamese fishing boat that reportedly saved 22 Filipinos after what Manila calls an allision with a Chinese vessel near the Reed Bank in the West Philippine Sea, Saigon Times reports, according to the Philippine Star.

Sigon Times cites a report on Vnexpress, a news website in Vietnam, that says Ngo Van Theng, 54, from Tien Giang province, has confirmed that it was his boat that rescued the Filipinos, whom the Chinese vessel reportedly abandoned after the incident.

Accordng to the report, Captain Nguyen Thanh Tam was at anchor “in the waters off Vietnam’s Truong Sa islands” when he and his crew heard voices speaking in a foreign language.

“At first, the captain said, he feared that they might be pirates but later found them both soaking wet and shivering and thought they might have had an accident at sea. The foreign men continued using hand signals to request help and pointed towards Reed Bank,” Saigon Times reports.

The boat sailed to the Reed Bank, which Manila calls Recto Bank, and found “20 Filipino fishermen wearing life jackets and clinging to plastic barrels and pieces of wood from the shipwreck.”

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