Amid rising international tensions over the disputed South China Sea, China’s naval patrol ships came within 80 kilometres of the Malaysian coast on Tuesday.

China's news agency Xinhua said four Chinese naval ships are currently patrolling around the Spratly Islands (Layang Layang), a collection of islets and reefs which are also wholly or partly claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei.

azlan It said the ships on Tuesday had reached the James Shoal, a collection of submerged rocks 80 kilometres off Malaysia and about 1,800 kilometres from the Chinese mainland.

The shoal marks the extreme limit of China's claims in the region, which it bases on a map published in the 1940s.

Ships in the patrol include the Jinggangshan , China's largest amphibious landing ship, Xinhua said.

According to AFP yesterday, in a separate development, the Chinese navy has denied firing on a Vietnamese boat in disputed waters during the exercise as its craft made wide-ranging patrols of the region.

The navy described a Vietnamese claim that Chinese vessels had fired on one of its fishing boats as "sheer fabrication", Xinhua reported.

Vietnam's Foreign Ministry said on Monday a fishing boat was "chased and shot at by a Chinese vessel" and had its cabin set ablaze. Hanoi called the incident a "serious violation" of its sovereignty.

"There is no such things that Chinese vessel fired with weapons or the Vietnamese boats caught fire," Xinhua quoted a Chinese naval official as saying, adding that the Chinese vessel had fired "two warning signal shells".

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