The violent face-off
Wednesday, 17th June 2020
There was a meeting last night at 10 pm between political establishment of the country and the Army Chief after 20 Indian soldiers died in a “violent face-off” at Ladakh’s Galwan Valley with Chinese troops.
PM Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, Foreign Minister S Jaishankar, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Army Chief General MM Naravane and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman took part in the meeting which was the last one in the Meeting series that occurred yesterday on India’s heavy response to the de-facto border with China.
Almost 45 Chinese soldiers have been wounded or killed in the event, Army sources confirmed. A Colonel and two soldiers were killed, the army had confirmed. However 17 more were added to the list of critically wounded who were exposed to sub-zero temperatures, finally succumbing to their injuries. There was “an attempt by the Chinese side to unilaterally change the status quo there”, said India.
There was no shooting involved but “violent hand-to-hand scuffles”, a source stated. Rods and nail-studded clubs were used by the Chinese troops while the two troops were exchanging punches and stones.
No details were given by the defense ministry of China.
Both the sides to “exercise maximum restraint”, the UN said.
Indian soldiers, according to Beijing, “crossed the border line twice... provoking and attacking Chinese personnel, resulting in serious physical confrontation between border forces on the two sides”.
Anurag Srivastava declined the claims and stated that the clash stemmed from “an attempt by the Chinese side to unilaterally change the status quo”.
Since May 9th, the tension has been increasing as there were stone-throwing and punches at Sikkim’s Naku La.
Source: NDTV