Indian and Chinese soldiers got into a fight on their disputed border, a first since a brutal 2020 brawl that left troops on both sides dead

John Haltiwanger
Updated ·2 min read
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Indian soldiers
Indian Army soldiers in Arunachal Pradesh on October 18, 2021.Money Sharma/Getty Images

  • Indian and Chinese troops clashed near their disputed border, leading to several injuries.

  • "Both sides immediately disengaged from the area," the Indian army said, per Reuters.

  • This marked the first such clash since a deadly skirmish between the two sides in June 2020.

Indian and Chinese soldiers clashed Friday near their disputed border in Arunachal Pradesh, a state in northeastern India.

The clash led to minor injuries and "both sides immediately disengaged from the area," the Indian army said, according to Reuters, which also reported that the Indian commander in the area met with his Chinese counterpart following the fight.

The Indian and Chinese embassies in Washington, DC, did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Insider.

The reported clash marks the first such fight between the two countries along their disputed border since a brutal hand-to-hand combat incident in June 2020, which led to the deaths of at least 20 Indian and four Chinese troops.

The June 2020 fight occurred in the Galwan Valley in the Ladakh region. At the time, a senior Indian military official told the BBC that Chinese troops "hit our boys on the head with metal batons wrapped in barbed wire," adding, "Our boys fought with bare hands."

It's unclear what started the fight on Friday, and the exact number of troops injured remains unknown. But China and India — two nuclear-armed states and the most populous countries in the world — have been at odds over their border for years. China and India fought a war in 1962 over the dispute that ended with a tenuous truce, establishing a de facto 2,100-mile border known as the Line of Actual Control.

Until June 2020, the tense border dispute between China and India had not led to any fatalities since 1975.

"The skirmish is indicative of a complete breakdown of trust between the two sides. Peace along the Line of Actual Control is no more possible till the boundary issue is addressed," N.C. Bipindra, a defense analyst, told the Wall Street Journal regarding Friday's border skirmish.

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