Indian and Chinese Soldiers Clash Amid Border Standoff

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Indian and Chinese soldiers were involved in a physical altercation in the western Himalayas on Tuesday as tensions continue to rise over the disputed border

http://www.trunews.com/article/indian-and-chinese-soldiers-clash-amid-border-standoff

NEW DELHI/SRINAGAR, India (TRUNEWS) A source in New Delhi, who had been briefed on the military situation on the border, said soldiers foiled a bid by a group of Chinese troops to enter Indian territory in Ladakh, near the Pangong lake. Some of the Chinese soldiers carried iron rods and stones, and in the melee there were minor injuries on both sides, the source said. China's defense and foreign ministries did not immediately respond to request for comment. The two sides have frequently accused each other of intrusions into each other's territories, but clashes are rare.

The Indian military declined to comment on the incident. "There was an altercation near the Pangong lake," said a police officer in Srinagar, the capital of India's Jammu and Kashmir state, under which the area falls. An army source in Srinagar also spoke of an altercation following what he called a Chinese army "incursion in Pangong lake area". The two armies are already engaged in a standoff in the Doklam plateau further east, in another part of their 3,500 km (2,175 mile) unmarked mountain border.

China has repeatedly asked India to unilaterally withdraw from the Doklam area, or else face the prospect of an escalation. Chinese state media have warned India of a fate worse than its crushing defeat in a brief border war in 1962. The trouble started in June when India sent troops to stop China building a road in the Doklam area, which is remote, uninhabited territory claimed by both China and India's ally Bhutan. New Delhi said it sent its troops because Chinese military activity in Doklam, near the trijunction of the borders of India, China and Bhutan, was a threat to the security of its own northeast region.