China Brings in Its Big Guns After Troops Fought to The Death With Rocks: Beijing Puts On a Show of Force on Tibetan Plateau as Indian PM Warns of ‘Befitting Reply’ And Hawks in Delhi Demand Retaliation for Border Clash

• China Brings in Its Big Guns After Troops Fought to The Death With Rocks: Beijing Puts On a Show of Force on Tibetan Plateau as Indian PM Warns of ‘Befitting Reply’ And Hawks in Delhi Demand Retaliation for Border Clash
  by ROSS IBBETSON FOR MAILONLINE and AP, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/
  * China today broadcast live-fire military drills on the Tibetan plateau as India warned of a ‘befitting reply’ after 20 of its soldiers were killed in bloody hand-to-hand combat at the disputed Himalayan border
  * Beijing announced it had suffered 43 casualties, but did not specify whether any of its men had been killed in the first deadly combat between the two nuclear-armed countries since 1975
  * As hawks in Delhi demanded retribution for the skirmish, Modi warned: ‘the sacrifice of the soldiers will not go in vain. India wants peace but if antagonised it can and will give a befitting reply’
  * China meanwhile broadcast images of intense military exercises involving 7,000 infantry and featuring some of the country’s most powerful weapons, including the Type 15 light tank and HJ-10 anti-tank missile
  * In Beijing, a spokesman said Monday’s clash erupted after Indians ‘crossed the line, acted illegally, provoked and attacked the Chinese, resulting in both sides engaging in serious physical conflict and injury and death’
  * According to the Indian account, what started out as an effort at disengagement after a month-long standoff along the frontier unravelled last week when Indian troops furiously dismantled a Chinese camp
  * On Monday, these skirmishes boiled over into a full-scale brawl atop a ridge-line above the Galwan River, with many men dying after being knocked unconscious by nail-studded clubs and plunging into icy waters
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