First time Taiwan fires warning shots at Chinese Drones
New Delhi: The unexpected move of Taiwan against China, will not be easy to understand for the Beijing government as the island country has fired warning shots against the Chinese drones for the first time. The incident come to the light when tension between China and Taiwan boosted massively after the speaker of the United States House of Representatives – Pelosi visited Taiwan.
Taiwan military spokesperson said the drone headed back to China after the shots were fired, a military spokesperson said.
Taiwan has complained of Chinese drones repeatedly flying very close to small groups of islands it controls near China’s coast, most recently by the Kinmen islands, as part of military drills by Beijing. China has carried out the exercises around the island after a visit by the US House of Representatives speaker, Nancy Pelosi, this month.
There was no immediate response from China. On Monday, the Chinese foreign ministry dismissed Taiwan’s complaints about the drones as nothing “to make a fuss about”. Footage of at least two drone missions showing Taiwanese soldiers at their posts, and in one case throwing rocks at a drone, have circulated widely on Chinese social media.
Tsai Ing-wen, President of an independent country Taiwan – criticized China for its drone and other grey zone warfare activity. “I want to tell everyone that the more the enemy provokes, the more calm we must be. We will not provoke disputes, and we will exercise self-restraint, but it does not mean that we will not counter,” Tsai told naval officers.
She said she had ordered the defense ministry to take “necessary and strong countermeasures” to defend their airspace. She did not elaborate.
The Kinmen islands are at their closest point just a few hundred meters (yards) from Chinese territory, opposite China’s Xiamen and Quanzhou cities.
On the Chinese drone activities near the border areas, the Taiwanese defense minister, Chiu Kuo-cheng, said he could not give details on what they would do to counter the incursions but he said the military would react based on the principle of “self-defense”.
(Vinayak)
