Protesters burn images of president Xi Jinping after ’20’ Indian soldiers die fighting Chinese troops
PROTESTERS burn images of president Xi Jinping after at least 20 Indian soldiers died fighting with Chinese troops.
Activists started the fire in Bhopal after soldiers clashed on the disputed India-China border in the Himalayas.
Officials said Monday’s fight, in which iron rods were used but no guns, followed a standoff in Ladakh since early May.
An Indian official said the two sides were discussing how to defuse the situation when “the People’s Liberation Army turned on a group of Indian soldiers”.
Beijing claimed Indian troops sparked the clash by crossing the border. It said Chinese soldiers were also killed.
The clash came after both countries deployed thousands of troops in a month-long face-off that sparked fears of war breaking out between the two nuclear powers.
The Chinese foreign ministry called on India not to take any unilateral action or stir up trouble, Reuters reports.
Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian was quoted as saying that India had crossed the border, "provoking and attacking Chinese personnel, resulting in serious physical confrontation between border forces on the two sides".
Both sides insist no bullets have been fired in four decades.
It is the first loss of life in a confrontation between the two nations since 1975.
SIMMERING TENSIONS
The deadly clash came days after Indian Army Chief Gen MM Naravane said both sides had begun disengaging from Galwan Valley.
Thousands of Indian and Chinese soldiers, backed by armored trucks and artillery, have been facing off a few hundred yards apart for more than a month in the Ladakh region near Tibet.
Army officers and diplomats have held a series of meetings to try to end the impasse, with no breakthrough.
Indian officials say Chinese soldiers crossed the boundary in Ladakh in early May at three different points, erecting tents and guard posts and ignoring verbal warnings to leave.
That triggered shouting matches, stone-throwing and fistfights, much of it replayed on television news channels and social media.
Since then India has accused China of invading 20 square miles of its territory.
China also accused Indian troops of crossing its border and attacking Chinese soldiers.
The China-India border dispute covers nearly 2,175 miles of frontier that the two countries call the Line of Actual Control.
India accuses China of occupying almost 15,000 square miles of its territory.
They fought a bitter war in 1962 that spilled into Ladakh, and tensions have simmered ever since.
Soldiers from the two sides are also eyeball-to-eyeball in Naku La, in the north-eastern Indian state of Sikkim between Nepal and Bhutan.
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Troops reportedly came to blows on the border there in May.
India has also been locked in a long-running dispute with Pakistan over the Kashmir region, parts of which are controlled by each nation.