Taipei, Jan 24 (AP) China flew 39 warplanes toward Taiwan in its largest such sortie of the new year, continuing a pattern that the island has answered by scrambling its own jets in response.

The formation Sunday night included 24 J-16 fighter jets and 10 J-10 jets, among other support aircraft and electronic warfare aircraft, according to Taiwan's defense ministry.

Also Read | Global COVID-19 Caseload Tops 350.9 Million, Deaths Surge to More Than 5.59 Million: Johns Hopkins University.

Taiwan's air force scrambled its own jets and tracked the People's Liberation Army planes on its air defense radar systems, the defense ministry said.

Chinese pilots have been flying towards Taiwan on a near-daily basis in the past year and a half, since Taiwan's government started publishing the data regularly. The largest sortie was 56 warplanes on a single day last October.

Also Read | TTP Wants to Create Fear in Pakistan, Terror Incidents May Continue in Coming Weeks, Says Report.

The activity has generally been in the air space southwest of Taiwan and falls into what Taiwan's military calls the air defense identification zone, or air space it monitors out of national security considerations.

Taiwan and China split during a civil war in 1949, but China claims the island as its own territory. As a result, Beijing opposes any action that would identify Taiwan as a sovereign state and has used diplomatic and military means to isolate and intimidate Taiwan.

Tensions have been high since Taiwanese citizens elected Tsai Ing-wen as president in 2016, to which Beijing responded by cutting off previously established communications with the island's government. Tsai's predecessor was friendly to China and had endorsed Beijing's claim that the two are part of a single Chinese nation. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)