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NEW DELHI (Reuters) – A senior Indian official said Tuesday that Indian troops had been deployed to four strategic hills after what New Delhi called a Chinese raid attempt along the disputed Himalayan border, underscoring tensions. dormant among the Asian giants.
China denied acting first, and a spokeswoman for the embassy in New Delhi accused Indian troops of crossing the Royal Line of Control (LAC), the de facto border, and of carrying out “blatant provocations.”
Indian and Chinese troops have been locked in a high-altitude border confrontation for months in the western Ladakh region of the Himalayas. The two sides have disputed the course of the border for more than half a century.
The Indian official, who was briefed on the latest incident, said that Indian troop movements responded to an attempt by large numbers of Chinese infantry to cross a key mountain pass on Saturday night.
“We mobilized and occupied the four heights,” the official said, adding that the four hills were on the Indian side of LAC.
The Indian official said the Chinese soldiers were backed by military vehicles and got close enough to engage in verbal discussions with the Indian troops, but there were no clashes.
He said the incident occurred on the southern shore of Pangong Tso, a picturesque lake in the snowy desert region where Indian and Chinese troops have clashed since April.
The Indian official said the Chinese had also been consolidating positions on the north shore of the lake with what appeared to be new defensive positions.
But Ji Rong, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in New Delhi, said Indian troops had violated the LAC on the southern bank of Pangong Tso and near another mountain pass.
“What India has done goes against the efforts made by both sides over a period of time to alleviate and cool the situation on the ground, and China resolutely opposes this,” he said.
“India … said it was ahead of Chinese military activity,” the Chinese state-backed Global Times said in an editorial. “The word ‘anticipate’ shows that it was the Indian troops who first took destructive action, and the Indian troops started the confrontation this time.”
In June, 20 Indian soldiers were killed in hand-to-hand combat with Chinese troops in the Galwan area of Ladakh, the most serious confrontation between the two countries in 50 years.
Later, both sides agreed to withdraw and the region’s military leaders held five rounds of talks. But the Indian military said this week that Beijing had breached the deal by carrying out “provocative military moves to change the status quo.”
(Report by Devjyot Ghoshal; edited by Sanjeev Miglani and Mark Heinrich)
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