BEIJING: China has issued a “stern protest” to Australia after a mid-air incident over the weekend involving army planes from the 2 international locations, a spokesman for Beijing’s defence ministry mentioned on Wednesday (Oct 22).
Australia mentioned that its Poseidon surveillance aircraft was approached by a Chinese language fighter jet throughout a Sunday patrol over the disputed South China Sea.
The Chinese language jet launched flares in “shut proximity” to the Australian plane, endangering the crew onboard, the defence division mentioned.
China’s army mentioned on Monday it had taken “efficient countermeasures”, accusing the Australian plane of getting “illegally intruded” into Chinese language airspace over the Xisha Islands, utilizing Beijing’s title for the Paracel Islands.
It was the newest in a string of episodes between China and Australia within the more and more contested airspace and transport lanes of Asia.
Beijing’s defence ministry chimed in on Wednesday, bashing Australia’s assertion, which it mentioned “distorts proper and unsuitable, shifts the blame on China and makes an attempt in useless to cowl up the vile and unlawful intrusion”.
“We’re strongly dissatisfied with this and have raised a stern protest with the Australian facet,” mentioned the web assertion attributed to spokesman Jiang Bin.
Jiang mentioned Canberra had “falsely accused” China of taking unsafe actions in the course of the mid-air encounter.
“This fallacy is totally untenable,” he mentioned.
“We urge Australia to instantly stop its infringing, provocative and hype-mongering actions.”
Jiang added that China’s army would “proceed to take obligatory measures to resolutely safeguard nationwide sovereignty”.
