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India, China in high-altitude fistfight at disputed border
KOLKATA, May 10, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – Several Indian and Chinese soldiers were
injured in a high-altitude cross-border clash involving fistfights and stone-
throwing at a remote but strategically important mountain pass near Tibet,
the Indian Army said Sunday.
There have been long-running border tensions between the nuclear-armed
neighbours, with a bitter war fought over India’s northeastern-most state of
Arunachal Pradesh in 1962.
“Aggressive behaviour by the two sides resulted in minor injuries to
troops. It was stone-throwing and arguments that ended in a fistfight,”
Indian Army Eastern Command spokesman Mandeep Hooda told AFP.
The “stand-off” on Saturday at Naku La sector near the 15,000-feet (4,572-
metre) Nathu La crossing in the northeastern state of Sikkim — which borders
Bhutan, Nepal and China — was later resolved after “dialogue and
interaction” at a local level, Hooda said.
“Temporary and short duration face-offs between border-guarding troops do
occur as boundaries are not resolved,” he added.
The violent clash is the first between the two countries since 2017, when
there was a brawl between Chinese and Indian soldiers near the northwest
Indian region of Ladakh.
In the same year, there was a high-altitude standoff in Bhutan’s Doklam
region after the Indian army sent troops to stop China from constructing a
road there.
China still claims about 90,000 square kilometres (35,000 square miles) of
territory under New Delhi’s control.
BSS/AFP/MRU/1900hrs