India, China in high-altitude fistfight at disputed border

Kolkata:  Several Indian and Chinese soldiers were injured in a high-altitude cross-border clash involving fistfights and stone-throwing at a remote but strategically important mountain pass near Tibet, the Indian Army said Sunday.

There have been long-running border tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours, with a bitter war fought over India's northeastern-most state of Arunachal Pradesh in 1962.

"Aggressive behaviour by the two sides resulted in minor injuries to troops. It was stone-throwing and arguments that ended in a fistfight," Indian Army Eastern Command spokesman Mandeep Hooda told AFP.

The "stand-off" on Saturday at Naku La sector near the 15,000-feet (4,572-metre) Nathu La crossing in the northeastern state of Sikkim - which borders Bhutan, Nepal and China - was later resolved after "dialogue and interaction" at a local level, Hooda said.

"Temporary and short duration face-offs between border-guarding troops do occur as boundaries are not resolved," he added.

The violent clash is the first between the two countries since 2017, when there was a brawl between Chinese and Indian soldiers near the northwest Indian region of Ladakh.

In the same year, there was a high-altitude standoff in Bhutan's Doklam region after the Indian army sent troops to stop China from constructing a road there.

China still claims about 90,000 square kilometres (35,000 square miles) of territory under New Delhi's control.