Timothy Birdnow

Furious fighting between Chinese military and India.

https://www.news18.com/news/india/pla-death-squads-hunted-down-indian-troops-in-galwan-in-savage-execution-spree-say-survivors-2673347.html?fbclid=IwAR1mAZJxZa6jo5SzYMLBF2PCorw24EteUMq9mESgotms749WBYAQOtUFu3Y

The fighting at Galwan, News18 had first reported on Tuesday, began after troops under Colonel Babu’s command dismantled a Chinese tent sent up near a position code-named Patrol Point 14, close to the mouth of the Galwan river. The tent had been dismantled following a meeting between Lieutenant General Harinder Singh, who commands the Leh-based XIV Corps, and Major-General Lin Liu, the head of the Xinjiang military district

Inside two days of the disengagement agreed to at the two Generals’ meeting in Chushul, though, the PLA set up a fresh tent at Patrol Point 14, inside territory claimed by India. Colonel Babu’s unit, government sources said, was ordered to ensure the tent was removed.

For reasons that remain unclear, the PLA refused to vacate Point 14 — reneging on the June 6 agreement — leading to a melee in which the Chinese tent was burned down, the sources said. In ongoing dialogue with division-level military commanders of the two armies in Galwan, a bid to bring about de-escalation, the PLA has alleged troops of the 16 Bihar were responsible for the incident.

The PLA, government sources have said, alleges Colonel Babu’s troops crossed a buffer zone separating the two sides, violating border-management protocols which mandates the use of white flags and banners to signal to the other side that it must turn back from the territory it is on.

The burning of the tent, the sources said, was followed by stone-pelting on Sunday, and then a massive Monday night attack on the 16 Bihar’s unprepared troops. Large rocks were also thrown towards the Indian positions by Chinese troops stationed on the high ridge above Point 14, one source said. Though some fought back using the improvised weapons carried by the PLA, most had no means of defence.

Large numbers of dead bodies, Indian military officials say, were handed over by the PLA on Monday morning — possibly men dragged away in the course of hand-to-hand fighting, and then killed.

The killings mark the Indian Army’s worst losses since the 1999 Kargil war, and mark the most intense fighting between India and China since 1967, when 88 Indian soldiers and perhaps as many as 340 PLA troops were killed in the course of intense skirmishes near the Nathu La and Cho La passes, the gateways to the strategically-vital Chumbi valley.

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