A report that Australian navy helicopter pilots were targeted with lasers, apparently coming from Chinese fishing boats, was "not consistent with the facts," China's defense ministry said Thursday.
Spokesman Wu Qian told reporters at a monthly briefing that Australia should "reflect on itself" before pointing the blame at others.
"According to my knowledge, what you have said is not consistent with the facts," Wu said.
Scholar Euan Graham, who was onboard the Royal Australian Navy flagship HMAS Canberra on a voyage from Vietnam to Singapore, wrote that the Tiger attack helicopter pilots were hit by lasers while exercising in South China Sea waters claimed by China earlier in May, "temporarily grounding them for precautionary medical reasons."
Graham wrote that bridge-to-bridge communications with the Chinese during the voyage were courteous, but that the Chinese requested the Australian warships to notify them in advance of any corrections to their course, something the Australian navy was "not about to concede while exercising its high-seas freedoms."
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