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US weapons not pictured 'en route to Philippines' after South China Sea standoff

Lina Portman1 week ago

0 Less than a minute

Similar false claims have also been shared in other Facebook posts here, here and here.

The messages surfaced after Chinese sailors wielding knives, sticks and an ax thwarted a Philippine attempt to resupply marines stationed on an abandoned warship deliberately beached in the South China Sea to assert territorial claims of Manila.

It is the latest and most serious incident in a series of escalating confrontations between Chinese and Philippine ships in recent months, as Beijing has stepped up efforts to assert its claims to almost the entire waterway strategically located.

AFP reported that the violent confrontation fueled growing concern that the conflict could drag on in the United States, Manila's mutual defense partner.

But the The Philippine government has said it does not consider the clash an “armed attack” that could trigger the deal.

Col. Xerxes Trinidad, public affairs chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, said the photos did not show a recent delivery of U.S. military aid to the Philippines.

“There was no event on June 22, 2024 in which thousands of US military goods were flown from California to Clark Air Force Base,” Trinidad told AFP on June 25.

Reverse image searches on Google revealed that the images show US military operations in 2022.

Cargo to Ukraine

The first photo showing stacks of cargo intended to be loaded onto an aircraft matched the 51 seconds of a video released to the US Marine Corps archives on July 29, 2022 (archived link).

According to the caption, the footage was filmed on the same day and shows humanitarian aid heading to Ukraine at Dover Air Force Base in the US state of Delaware.

The title of the video read: “Dover AFP Supports U.S.-Ukraine Strategic Partnership.”

Below is a screenshot comparison between the photo in the fake posts (left) and in the US Army video (right):

The second and third photos appeared between six and 16 seconds into a video posted online on February 10, 2022 by the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS), a US military public affairs service (archived link).

DVIDS said the clips were taken when Dover Air Force Base hosted Oksana Markarova, Ukraine's ambassador to the United States, on a foreign military sales mission.

Below are screenshot comparisons between the fake post photos (left) and the DVIDS video (right):

AFP here fact-checked a wave of misinformation about the South China Sea conflict.