Taiwan Forces Fire Flares at Drone Near Kinmen Islands

BEIJING (Sputnik) - Taiwanese forces on Monday fired flares at a drone that approached the Kinmen Islands, the Defense Ministry said.

"Today, on September 12, at 7.37 p.m. [11:37 GMT] a drone was detected, it entered the airspace in the area of restricted waters at Jiaoyu island," Chang Zone-sung, the spokesman of the Army's Kinmen Defense Command, said.

The ministry stated that the drone left the area after flares were shot in its direction.

In late August, the Taiwanese military fired a warning shot towards a Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) drone for the first time after it had approached the Kinmen Islands.

The Kinmen Islands is a group of islands located roughly 6.2 miles east of the city of Xiamen in China's Fujian Province administered by Taiwan. According to the South China Morning Post, until recently, no Chinese military aircraft, including drones, had flown over the islands since the 1950s. The ministry began recording an increased activity of China's aircraft in the islands' airspace after the provocative visit of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taipei in early August.

China considers Taiwan an unalienable part of its sovereign territory and opposes any official contacts between the island and other countries. The US has been supporting the government of Taiwan and selling weapons to the island, while claiming that its position on the One China principle hasn't change. Beijing has repeatedly said that the One China principle is a political foundation of China-US relations and that violations by Washington of its own obligations have been jeopardizing cooperation between the two countries, threatening peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.