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A video showing Chinese and Indian troops fighting with sticks and fists, apparently in a disputed border region, has gone viral on Chinese social media.
The images, which are the first of their kind to appear online, show soldiers crashing near a river. On June 15, a violent brawl broke out in the Galwan Valley in the Ladakh region of India, leaving at least 20 Indian soldiers dead. Beijing declined to say at the time how many casualties it suffered in the incident.
A Chinese military source said the video, which first appeared online Tuesday night, was genuine and was taken “a few months ago.”
The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the footage showed that the soldiers, by not using their firearms, had acted sparingly.
The images showed Chinese soldiers armed with clubs and riot shields. Some of the Indian soldiers had their rifles on their backs but did not fire them.
A watermark on the video, which has been viewed millions of times, suggests that it was recorded on a Chinese phone.
A military analyst, who also asked not to be named, said he thought the confrontation seen in the video footage was probably not the one that occurred on June 15, but an earlier one that occurred along the Galwan River in May.
“Judging from their weapons, this video is a previous confrontation, as we know that the two sides only started sending their best equipped units after May,” the person said.
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The analyst said it was possible that Beijing had released the film to show that it had video evidence of the disputes that took place along the disputed border.
“This may be Beijing’s way of telling the Chinese people and India to some extent that it has evidence to show who broke the deal. [of not using firearms] and who started the fight. “
China and India have been embroiled in a bitter border dispute since May, and since then have held a series of diplomatic and military talks to ease tensions. However, the situation escalated for the second time in a week on Monday when shots were fired during a clash in Pangong Tso, a high mountain lake.
Those clashes came after the defense ministers of China and India met in Moscow on Friday. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi will meet his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting in Moscow during a week-long trip to Russia that begins Thursday.
This article China-India border dispute: video of violent clash between soldiers goes viral first appeared on South China Morning Post
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