WASHINGTON: A US navy warship sailed near islands claimed by China in the South China Sea on Friday, the latest attempt to counter what Washington sees as Beijing’s efforts to limit freedom of navigation in the strategic waters, US officials said.

The guided-missile destroyer USS Decatur challenged “excessive maritime claims” near the Paracel Islands, among a string of islets, reefs and shoals over which China has territorial disputes with its neighbours, the officials said.

The latest US patrol is expected to anger Beijing and could further escalate tensions over the South China Sea. The destroyer sailed within waters claimed by China, close to but not within the 12-nautical-mile territorial limits of the islands, the officials said. The USS Decatur passed close to the Paracel Islands and “conducted this transit in a routine, lawful manner without ship escorts and without incident,” Pentagon spokesman Commander Gary Ross said.

“This operation demonstrated that coastal States may not unlawfully restrict the navigation rights, freedoms, and lawful uses of the sea that the United States and all states are entitled to exercise under international law.” The maneuver is the third South China Sea “freedom of navigation” operation conducted this year by the United States, which has repeatedly stressed it will ignore China’s “excessive” maritime claims.

Ross said the Decatur did not sail within 12 nautical miles of the islands, but crossed through a broader swath of ocean claimed by China.

Friday’s operation was the first since a July ruling by a tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which ruled there was no legal basis to China’s claims to nearly all of the sea — a verdict Beijing dismissed vehemently.

China that month held a week of military drills around the Paracels in the northern part of the South China Sea, during which other ships were prohibited from entering the waters. Several other nations across the region including the Philippines and Vietnam have rival claims to various parts of the South China Sea.

Published in Dawn, October 22nd, 2016