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Tehran, 17 June_The long-running border dispute between Asian nuclear powers India and China turned deadly for the first time in nearly half a century after at least 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a "violent face-off,” the army said Tuesday.
Experts warned the high-altitude clash along the Himalayan frontier was a worrying development which could escalate, following weeks of rising tensions and the deployment of thousands of extra troops from both sides.
Brawls erupt regularly between the world's two most populous nations across their disputed 3,500-kilometre border, but no-one has been killed since 1975.
Beijing and Delhi blamed each other for Monday's clash in the precipitous, rocky terrain of the strategically important Galwan Valley, which lies between China's Tibet and India's Ladakh.
An Indian army source in the region told AFP the incident involved no shooting but "violent hand-to-hand scuffles.”
The soldiers threw punches and stones at each other, with Chinese troops allegedly attacking their Indian counterparts with rods and nail-studded clubs during the more than six-hour fight, the Hindustan Times reported.
India had earlier put the toll at three dead.
But in a statement later Tuesday the army added that 17 more critically injured were "exposed to sub-zero temperatures... (and) succumbed to their injuries."
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