Officials said a Filipino scientific team were in Sandy Cay to collect sand samples from the sandbars. A larger Chinese coast guard ship “water cannoned and sideswiped" one of the vessels twice ...

A Chinese warship collided with one of its own coast guard vessels while chasing Philippine boats earlier this week in the ...

A FISHERIES bureau boat was forced to turn back Wednesday morning after three Chinese maritime militia ships blocked its way ...

A vessel of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) was forced to turn back near Sandy Cay in the West ...

Senator Jinggoy Estrada on Friday called on government agencies to verify a report that Chinese militia vessels bloced a ...

The back and forth over Sandy Cay is the latest flare-up in a long-running dispute over territory in the hotly contested South China Sea, which China claims almost in its entirety.

Sandy Cay was at the center of a previous standoff between the Philippines and China in 2017 after the Philippines started building a shelter for its fishermen on one of the sandbars.

Sandy Cay isn't an underwater reef. The islands remain above ground at high tide, which grants them legal status as a "rock" (or land surrounded by water) under UNCLOS.

Sandy Cay and Thitu island have been at the centre of these disputes previously. In 2019, about 275 Chinese vessels appeared near Thitu, prompting an aggressive response from the Philippines ...

Sandy Cay is close to Thitu Island, the largest and most strategically important of the nine features the Philippines occupies in the Spratly archipelago, where Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan and China ...