India says its soldiers brawled with Chinese counterparts on border

Indian and Chinese soldiers brawled last week along a disputed border, Indian officials have said, as a months-long standoff between the two countries continued.

The clash in the Naku La area of Sikkim came four days before India and China held a ninth round of talks on Sunday on ending tensions in another contested border area in the remote Ladakh region.

The Indian army described the clash at Naku La as “a minor face off” and said it “was resolved by local commanders as per established protocols”.

An army statement on Monday did not provide any other details, but asked media “to refrain from overplaying or exaggerating” the incident.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said he did not have information on the incident but urged India “not to take any unilateral action that may further complicate or exacerbate the border tension”.

Since a deadly clash last year, soldiers from the two sides have brawled occasionally and fired shots for the first time in decades, breaking a longstanding agreement not to use firearms during border confrontations.

Two Indian security officials said at least 18 Chinese soldiers tried to cross into Indian-claimed territory at Naku La last Wednesday night and were blocked by Indian soldiers, leading to clashes with sticks and stones. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue and in keeping with government regulations, said soldiers on both sides were carrying firearms but did not use them.

The two officials said more than a dozen Indian soldiers and at least eight Chinese soldiers received minor injuries.

There was no independent confirmation of the incident.

Both sides rushed more soldiers to the area in an “aggressive deployment” that swelled the number of personnel to hundreds, the officials said.

India and China have been locked in a tense military standoff since May, high in the Karakoram mountains, with troops settling in for the harsh winter. Both sides have mobilised tens of thousands of soldiers, artillery and fighter aircraft along the fiercely contested border known as the Line of Actual Control, or LAC, that separates Chinese and Indian-held territories from Ladakh in the west to India’s eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims in its entirety.

The frontier is broken in parts where the Himalayan nations of Nepal and Bhutan border China, and where Sikkim, the site of the latest brawl, is sandwiched.

The LAC divides areas of physical control rather than territorial claims. Despite more than three dozen rounds of talks over the years and multiple meetings between the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, and the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, they are nowhere near settling the dispute.

The standoff began last May with a fierce brawl, and exploded into hand-to-hand combat with clubs, stones and fists on June 15 that left 20 Indian soldiers dead. China is believed to also have had casualties, but has not given any details.

Indian and Chinese army commanders met for the ninth round of talks after a gap of two and a half months in Ladakh on Sunday but neither side released any details of the outcome.