China, Philippines launch rescue missions for distressed cargo ship near Scarborough Shoal

On Tuesday, the Chinese military said it organised naval and air force units to drive away a Philippine government aircraft that it accused of "illegally intruding" into airspace over the atoll.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea, overlapping the exclusive economic zones of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

(Reporting by Beijing Newsroom and Karen Lema in Manila; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Raju Gopalakrishnan)