Australian Foreign Secretary Greg Sheridan says the “Chinese action” against a Royal Australian Air Force plane was “very much an act of war.”
It comes after the Defense Department released a statement on Sunday announcing that a P-8 aircraft had been intercepted by a Chinese aircraft during “routine maritime surveillance” in international airspace.
Sheridan spoke about the incident between the RAAF plane and a Chinese military plane in the South China Sea region.
“He was completely indifferent to the real possibility that Australian lives could have been lost,” Sheridan told Sky News Australia.
“I mean, cutting right in front of a P-8 like that, releasing the straw to be absorbed into its engine; you would be very unlucky if that led to a death, but it’s a real risk that the plane could have been off and crashed.
“Now the Chinese have done this with other nations, only recently they have done this with Canada … but this is a very high level of aggression.”