Vietnam land area

Thomson ReutersWest London Reef is pictured in South China water in 2015

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Newly introduced satellite pictures reveal Vietnam has actually completed significant land reclamation at two web sites inside disputed Southern China Sea, although scale and rate associated with work is dwarfed by compared to China, a U.S. study institute stated on Thursday.

The pictures, distributed to Reuters by Washington's Center for Strategic and Overseas Studies (CSIS), show an expansion for the land part of Vietnamese-controlled Sand Cay and West London Reef inside Spratly archipelego and also the inclusion of buildings.

Mira Rapp-Hooper, manager of CSIS's Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, stated the work included armed forces installations and appeared to have started before China began a flurry of reclamation tasks a year ago.

The pictures, taken by satellite imagery firm DigitalGlobe, were taken between 2010 and April 30 this year.

"on a single website, it offers built a substantial brand new area that has been previously under liquid at another it has used land reclamation to add acreage to a preexisting area, " Rapp-Hooper said.

The speed of recent Chinese reclamation work features alarmed its next-door neighbors therefore the united states of america, which views it as a potential hazard into the status quo in a region through which trillion of sea-borne trade passes each year.

Asia claims 90 percent for the Southern China water, that is regarded as abundant with gas and oil, with overlapping statements from Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan.

New Vietnamese military facilities at Sand Cay seemed to add protective positions and firearm emplacements, and brand-new buildings noticeable on West London Reef may also have army applications, Rapp-Hooper stated.

Later last thirty days, after weeks of criticism about its reclamation work, China struck right back by accusing Vietnam, the Philippines and others of carrying out unlawful building focus on "Chinese" countries inside South Asia water.

"Strictly speaking, these photographs show that Asia is right, " Rapp-Hooper said, "but we could safely say that the range and scale of exactly what China features undertaken is completely unprecedented and dwarfs Vietnam’s activities several times over."