Armoured vehicles in Chinese city of Xiamen amid Pelosi visit

Armoured vehicles in Chinese city of Xiamen amid Pelosi visit
The unverified videos emerged amid soaring tensions between China and US with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi expected to touch down in Taipei at 2.20pm GMT today. Pelosi would be the highest-ranking U.S. elected official to visit Taiwan since 1997.

Her jet left the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday morning, according to flight-tracking website Flightradar24. The site crashed earlier after 300,000 people tried to chart Pelosi's journey.

Beijing earlier warned that the United States will 'pay the price' if Pelosi visits Taiwan while Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi said on Tuesday that those U.S. politicians who 'play with fire' on the Taiwan issue will 'come to no good end'.

Moscow also weighed in and accused the US of 'destabilizing' the world by allowing Pelosi to travel to Taiwan, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warning that such a visit would be 'extremely provocative'.

Amid the intensifying warnings from China over Pelosi's visit, four US warships, including the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, were positioned in waters east of Taiwan on 'routine' deployments.

The carrier USS Ronald Reagan had transited the South China Sea and was currently in the Philippines Sea, east of Taiwan and the Philippines and south of Japan, a US Navy official confirmed on Tuesday. The Japanese-based Reagan is operating with a guided missile cruiser, USS Antietam, and a destroyer, USS Higgins.

The US Navy official said the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli was also in the area as part of a deployment to the region that started in early May from its home port of San Diego.

Taipei has vowed to defend itself and dispatch its military forces in reaction to 'enemy threats' as risk of Beijing attacking Taiwan grows.

Taiwan has also made strengthening its defenses a priority, with regular military and civil defense drills, including designating air-raid shelters where civilians can take cover if Beijing launches missiles at the democratic island.

Self-governed Taiwan's 23 million people live under the constant threat of invasion by authoritarian China, which views the island as its territory and has vowed to one day seize it, by force if necessary. Beijing tries to keep Taiwan isolated on the world stage and opposes countries having official exchanges with it.