US weapons not pictured ‘en route to the Philippines’ after clash in South China Sea

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

The posts surfaced after Chinese sailors wielding knives, sticks and an axe thwarted a Philippine attempt to resupply Marines stationed on an abandoned warship that had been deliberately run aground in the South China Sea to assert Manila’s territorial claims.

It was the latest and most serious incident in a series of escalating confrontations between Chinese and Philippine vessels in recent months as Beijing stepped up efforts to enforce its claims to nearly the entire strategic waterway.

According to AFP, the violent conflict led to growing concerns that the United States, Manila’s joint defense partner, could become involved in the conflict.

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

Col.

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

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

Freight destined for Ukraine

The first photo of piles of cargo to be loaded onto an aircraft corresponded to the 51-second mark of a video posted to the US Marine Corps archives on July 29, 2022 (archived link).

According to the caption, the footage was filmed that same day and shows humanitarian aid destined for Ukraine being delivered at Dover Air Force Base in the US state of Delaware.

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

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

The second and third photos appeared in the six- and sixteen-second marks of a video uploaded 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 captured when Dover Air Base hosted Oksana Markarova, the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, during a foreign military sales mission.

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

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