Three Filipino fishermen died after their fishing boat was rammed by a still unidentified foreign commercial vessel while crossing the South China Sea, the Philippine coastguard said on Wednesday.
The incident occurred on Monday while the boat was transiting waters 157 km northwest of the disputed Scarborough Shoal, it said in a statement. Eleven crew members survived after the boat sank.
Tensions around those waters have recently flared up after the Philippines said it removed a 300-metre-long ball-buoy barrier installed by China's coastguard near the Scarborough Shoal, a prime fishing spot and one of Asia's most contested maritime features.
The strategic shoal, named after a British cargo vessel that ran aground on the atoll in the 18th century, was seized in 2012 by China, which has maintained a constant presence of coastguard and fishing trawlers there ever since.
China has rejected the Philippine version of events over the barrier, while the United States has weighed in with support behind Manila and vowed to honour its treaty commitments to defend its treaty ally if attacked.
The Philippine coastguard did not elaborate on the incident or provide details of the vessel it said had rammed the Filipino crew.
The Trump administration has deported alleged members of a Venezuelan gang from the US despite a court order forbidding it from doing so, saying in an extraordinary statement that a judge did not have the authority to block its actions.
Russia will seek "ironclad" guarantees in any peace deal on Ukraine that NATO nations will exclude Kyiv from membership and that Ukraine will remain neutral, a Russian deputy foreign minister said in remarks published on Monday.
The interim government in Damascus will take part on Monday in an annual international conference to gather aid pledges for Syria, facing dire humanitarian problems and an uncertain political transition after the fall of Bashar al-Assad.
A SpaceX capsule delivered four astronauts to the International Space Station early on Sunday in a NASA crew-swap mission that will allow a pair of stuck astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, to return home after nine months on the orbiting lab.
59 people were killed and more than 100 injured when a fire broke out in a nightclub early on Sunday in the North Macedonian town of Kocani, Interior Minister Pance Toskovski confirmed, saying the fire was caused by "pyrotechnic devices" used during a concert.