China launches fighters amid Japan dispute: State media

BEIJING (AFP) - Beijing sent fighter jets to the East China Sea after Japanese aircraft followed a Chinese plane in a territorial dispute, the defence ministry said on Friday according to state media.

A ministry official told a press conference that two J-10 fighters flew to the area on Thursday to monitor two Japanese F-15 fighters that had trailed a Chinese Y-8 aircraft, China's official Xinhua news agency said.

The comments came after Japanese media reported Tokyo had scrambled fighter jets to head off an unspecified number of Chinese military planes near islands at the centre of an increasingly tense maritime row.

The two countries are at odds over the small, uninhabited islands controlled by Tokyo as the Senkakus but claimed by Beijing, which calls them Diaoyu.