According to multiple media reports, on July 24, a Vietnamese vessel met with distress and sank in the South China Sea, with a total of 62 Vietnamese crew members on board. As of the afternoon of July 26, Chinese rescue forces had successfully rescued 45 people, while 17 remained missing. Search and rescue operations were still underway.

At 18:23 on July 25, the "Nanhai Jiu 115" vessel of the Ministry of Transport's South China Sea Rescue Bureau, while returning to Sanya on its way back, spotted a life raft approximately 38 nautical miles north of Yongshu Reef with multiple distressed personnel on board and immediately launched a rescue operation. At 18:54, the "Nanhai Jiu 115" rescued all 29 people from the life raft.

The "Nanhai Jiu 115" continued surface searches. The South China Sea Rescue Bureau subsequently dispatched the "Nanhai Jiu 113" and a "B-72CT" rescue helicopter to the scene for search and rescue operations. At 22:38, the "Nanhai Jiu 115" located a second life raft and rescued 7 distressed personnel from it.

On July 26, under the unified coordination of the Sansha Maritime Search and Rescue Center, various forces on site successively rescued another 9 distressed individuals. One of them was spotted at 13:30 on July 26 by the "Nanhai Jiu 113" approximately 13 nautical miles southeast of the first life raft, where a person overboard was found; the rescue was successfully completed at 13:41. Currently, two rescue vessels and one rescue helicopter remain on site conducting searches.

According to information obtained from the rescued personnel, the distressed vessel was the Vietnamese ship "KHOI NGUYEN 18" (Chinese name "Qiyuan 18"), with a length of 69.9 meters, a beam of 10.8 meters, and a gross tonnage of 999 tons. The vessel encountered distress and sank at around 23:00 on July 24 in waters approximately 220 nautical miles east of Khanh Hoa Province, Vietnam, with 62 Vietnamese nationals on board. The distressed personnel drifted on life rafts with ocean currents to the waters near Yongshu Reef in the Nansha Islands. As for the specific cause of the sinking of the "KHOI NGUYEN 18," official information has not yet been released and awaits further investigation.