Chinese troops armed with iron bars and rocks brawl with Indian soldiers near border, New Delhi source says

Indian and Chinese soldiers were involved in an altercation in the western Himalayas on Tuesday, Indian sources said, further raising tensions between the two countries which are already locked in a two-month stand-off in another part of the disputed border.

A source in New Delhi, who had been briefed on the military situation on the border, said soldiers foiled a bid by a group of Chinese troops to enter Indian territory in Ladakh, near the Pangong lake.

Some of the Chinese soldiers carried iron rods and stones, and in the melee there were minor injuries on both sides, the source said.

The two sides have frequently accused each other of intrusions into each other’s territories, but clashes are rare. The Indian military declined to comment on the incident.

“There was an altercation near the Pangong lake,” said a police officer in Srinagar, the capital of India’s Jammu and Kashmir state, under which the area falls. An army source in Srinagar also spoke of an altercation following what he called a Chinese army “incursion in Pangong lake area”.

The two armies are already engaged in a stand-off in the Doklam plateau further east, in another part of their 3,500 km (2,175 mile) unmarked mountain border.