The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) has yet to confirm if there was an actual confrontation between the Philippine Navy ship and the Chinese Coast Guard in December as reported by Raymond Powell of the Stanford University’s Gordian Knot Center (GKC) in a forum.

“We are still finding the... report. Actually, we were told it was on December 8. So we will still verify if it really happened. It involves technical issues, so we may not know what actually happened,” said AFP spokesperson Col. Medel Aguilar in an interview with dzBB.

In the forum, Powell showed satellite images GKC gathered with other research centers that showed a Chinese vessel blocking BRP Andres Bonifacio from going to Scarborough Shoal on December 8.

''The unknown ship here is actually a China Coast Guard ship 3303... it put itself again between the Bonifacio and Panatag (Shoal) and the two ships converge to about 800 meters," he said.

"They go from North to South and then eventually the Bonifacio peels off and returns back to the Philippines. As far as I know this was never reported or was never discussed but we were able to find out because these are the kinds of tools that are now available to us," he added. Jaspearl Tan/DMS