Images show Vietnam reclaiming land in South China Sea

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By David Brunnstrom WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Newly released satellite images show Vietnam has carried out significant land reclamation at two sites in the disputed South China Sea, though the scale and pace of the work is dwarfed by that of China, a U.S. research institute said on Thursday. The photographs, shared with Reuters by Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), show an expansion of the land area of Vietnamese-controlled Sand Cay and West London Reef in the Spratly archipelego and the addition of buildings. Mira Rapp-Hooper, director of CSIS's Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, said the work included military installations and appeared to have started before China began a flurry of reclamation projects last year. "On one site, it has constructed a significant new area that was formerly under water and at another it has used land reclamation to add acreage to an existing island," Rapp-Hooper said.




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