Beijing | China accused the Indian army on Tuesday of illegally crossing its border into the Himalayas and resorting to warning shots, after a deadly clash in June between the two Asian giants.
Old border disputes pit neighboring powers against the roof of the world. They were fueled in mid-June by an extremely rare shock, at an altitude of over 4,000 meters, between Indian and Chinese soldiers in Ladakh (northern India).
The clash left 20 dead on the Indian side and an unknown number of victims in the Chinese ranks. The deaths of Indian soldiers sparked outrage in their country.
In a statement released Tuesday, the Chinese Defense Ministry accused India of “serious military provocation” after the border crossing the day before by soldiers, who then “fired warning shots”.
“Chinese border defense troops have been forced to take appropriate countermeasures to stabilize the situation on the ground,” adds the text, which does not specify the nature of the measures.
New Delhi had not reacted immediately.
The Line of Effective Control (Line of Actual Control, LAC), the de facto border between India and China, is not properly demarcated.
This situation can lead Chinese and Indian soldiers to encounters where each thinks the other is breaking the line.
After the clash of June 15, senior officials of the Chinese and Indian armies met and agreed to work to ease tensions.
On Friday, the defense ministers of the two countries had a meeting in Moscow on the sidelines of an international meeting.
But the two men then accused each other of inflaming the situation, by press releases.
The last open conflict between the two most populous nations on the planet dates back to the 1962 blitzkrieg, which saw Indian troops quickly defeated by the Chinese military.
Officially, no shots have been fired along the border since 1975, in accordance with a long-standing practice aimed at avoiding a real military confrontation in this border region.