- The deaths of the four soldiers occurred when China and India fought in the Galwan Valley on 15 June 2020.
- China confirmed this for the first time in the PLA Daily.
- This is related to a shared 2100 mile long de facto boundary called the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
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China has admitted that four of its troops were killed for the first time during a clash with India last summer.
The deaths of the soldiers, the youngest of whom was 19 years old, came when China and India fought in the Himalayan-Galwan Valley in June in the deadliest confrontation between them for nearly 46 years.
China confirmed this for the first time in its official military newspaper, the People’s Liberation Army Daily (PLA Daily).
PLA Daily identified them as Chen Hongjun, Chen Xiangrong, Xiao Siyuan and Wang Zhuoran and said the first three were killed in the fight while Wang died by crossing a river to help his comrades.
Battalion Commander Chen Hongjun and the three other troops who died, whose ranks are unknown, were all named martyrs and honored posthumously with a fifth individual.
Immediately after the clash, India said that 20 of its soldiers were dead, while China simply said that there were deaths on both sides, but that they did not want to share the exact number of deaths among their troops, despite various unconfirmed reports that more than 40 estimated.
China and India share a 2100-mile de facto border in the Himalayas, called the Line of Actual Control (LAC), created in 1962 after a war between them for the piece of land.
It has been a source of tension ever since, and each side has regularly said the others have crossed the somewhat poorly defined border in their area in the Pangong Tso area in Ladakh.
In early May, Chinese and Indian troops and tanks were in the midst of an uprising in the Karakoram Mountains engaging in screaming matches, stone-throwing and fistfights as a bilateral agreement prevented the use of guns by either side, France 24 reported.
By the next month, business had increased and eventually spread north to the Galwan Valley, where India had built a military road for all weather conditions along the much-disputed border, Sky News added.
Although both countries agreed in September not to send any more troops and began negotiations that temporarily resolved the issue, there was a ‘minor’ incident last month. However, in the meantime, they agreed to ‘disconnect’ and began withdrawing from the LAC.