Four people including a child were killed and nine wounded in a suspected revenge attack in the southern Philippines, police said Sunday.

A group of men opened fire on homes of the Maranaw ethnic group in the town of Wao on Mindanao island on Saturday, said the town's senior police officer Avelino Vidal.

Beijing is poised to take "de facto control" of the South China Sea, the Philippines warned Sunday, but its call for a robust Southeast Asian response at a regional summit was shot down.

Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei claim parts of the strategic body of water, but Beijing claims nearly all of it, and its increasingly strident territorial assertions have caused concern in the region and beyond.

The Philippines accused the Chinese coastguard on Thursday of robbing Filipino fishermen at gunpoint during a series of confrontations at a disputed shoal in the hotly contested South China Sea.

Fishermen aboard three vessels with clear Chinese coastguard markings boarded two Philippine fishing boats in Scarborough Shoal on April 11, then took the crew's catch, the Philippine fisheries bureau said.

Malaysia has called for China to cooperate with Southeast Asia in speeding up talks on a set of rules in the disputed South China Sea, where Beijing's island-building activities have sparked international alarm.

Foreign Minister Anifah Aman, whose country hosts a regional summit next week, also cautioned rival claimants to the strategic seaway against taking actions that stoke tensions, according to an interview published Thursday in The Star.

The Philippines on Wednesday chided China for its "insecurity" over its claim to the South China Sea, after a Beijing-based tabloid dubbed the country a "cute little submissive" of the United States.

The response from President Benigno Aquino's spokesman Edwin Lacierda came after the Global Times newspaper -- with close ties to the ruling Communist Party -- featured an editorial Tuesday saying it was "laughable" imagining Philippine personnel "stumbling after U.S. forces".

The Philippines said Tuesday it would soon ask the United States for more military equipment and training to build its defenses, as it faces Chinese "aggressiveness" in disputed waters.

As hundreds of Filipino and American Marines simulated an amphibious assault to reclaim territory from invaders during annual war games, military chief General Gregorio Catapang told AFP he was drafting a "wish list" for U.S. aid.

The Philippines voiced alarm Monday about Chinese "aggressiveness" in disputed regional waters as it launched giant war games with the United States that were partly aimed as a warning shot to Beijing.

Philippine military chief General Gregorio Catapang released what he said were satellite photos of intense recent Chinese construction over seven reefs and shoals in the Spratly archipelago of the flashpoint South China Sea.

China is rapidly building an airstrip on an artificial island in disputed South China Sea waters, recent satellite pictures show, potentially ramping up tensions with several Southeast Asian neighbors.

Fiery Cross in the Spratly Islands was little more than a reef when China began land reclamation works to turn it into an island in late 2014.

U.S., Japanese and South Korean diplomats Thursday renewed concerns about moves by China to stake its claim to disputed seas and urged Beijing to preserve freedom of navigation in the key waterways.

Deputy U.S. Secretary Tony Blinken repeated America's position that all competing claims in the South and East China Seas should be dealt with according to the rule of law.

Beijing on Wednesday dismissed as "groundless" Philippine President Benigno Aquino's warning to AFP that the Asian giant's actions in the South China Sea should "engender fear for the rest of the world".

Aquino made his remarks in an exclusive interview on Tuesday, saying that China's increasing bold assertions of its territorial claims could cut access for other nations to vital international shipping lanes and rich fishing grounds in the sea.