FACE-OFF
China and India war fears escalate as thousands of troops are deployed along border and generals meet for crunch talks
CHINA and India have moved thousands of troops up to parts of their disputed border as tensions threaten to spill over into war.
Generals from both armies have met in a bid to defuse the stand-off high in the Himalayas, in which soldiers have come to blows
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Fears have been raised that a miscalculation could lead to all-out war between the two nuclear armed powers.
The China-India border dispute covers nearly 2,175 miles of frontier that the two countries call the Line of Actual Control.
They fought a bitter war in 1962 that spilled into Ladakh and the dispute has simmered on ever since and also tensions on their north eastern border.
Indian says latest dispute began in early May when large contingents of Chinese soldiers entered deep inside Indian-controlled territory at three places in Ladakh, erecting tents and posts.
They said the Chinese soldiers ignored repeated verbal warnings to leave which lead to shouting matches, stone-throwing and fistfights.
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India also mobilised thousands of soldiers in response to the situation.
The situation has also seen helicopters have faced off, boats have chased each other on Pangong Lake and patrols by jet fighters stepped up.
China has sought to downplay the confrontation while saying the two sides were communicating through both their front-line military units and their respective embassies to resolve the issue.
Lt. Gen. D.S. Hooda, who retired as head of the Indian military's Northern Command, under which Kashmir and Ladakh fall, said the negotiations are going to be "long and hard."
"There won't be much headway at military-level talks in terms of resolving the issue,” he said.
"But the military-level talks will help deescalate tensions on the ground and set a stage for diplomatic negotiations."
India and China have two of the world’s largest armies and their forces come face-to-face at many points.
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The Line of Actual Control is poorly demarcated and rivers, lakes and snowcaps mean the line separating soldiers can shift and they often come close to confrontation.
The current military tension is not limited to Ladakh.
Soldiers from the two sides are also eyeball-to-eyeball in Naku La, on the border between China and the north-eastern Indian state of Sikkim and also reportedly came to blows.