OTTAWA (Reuters) – Chinese warplanes buzzed a Canadian helicopter over international waters in the South China Sea last weekend and then fired flares at it, Defence Minister Bill Blair said on Friday, saying the incidents had put the crew in danger.
His comments marked the second time in two weeks that Canada has accused China’s air force of unsafe behavior. In mid-October, Blair said a Chinese jet had come within five meters (16 feet) of a surveillance plane taking part in a U.N. operation to enforce sanctions against North Korea.
Blair said a Chinese jet had initially flown right over the helicopter on Sunday, causing it to experience significant turbulence. Later that day another jet launched flares directly in front of the helicopter, forcing it to swerve to avoid being hit.
“These maneuvers put the safety of all personnel involved in unnecessary risk,” he told reporters, saying Ottawa considered the recent actions by Chinese jets to be “significantly unsafe”.
The Chinese embassy in Ottawa was not immediately available for comment. In the wake of the mid-October incident, Beijing said the Canadian plane had violated China’s sovereignty.
In May, the Pentagon said a Chinese fighter jet carried out an “unnecessarily aggressive” maneuver near a U.S. military plane over the South China Sea in international airspace. The encounter followed what Washington calls a recent trend of increasingly dangerous behavior by Chinese military aircraft.
(Reporting by David Ljunggren, editing by Steve Scherer and Andrew Cawthorne)
