Officials in both countries said China and India were withdrawing frontline troops along the disputed sections of their mountain border, where they had been fighting for months.
According to officials, the troops began unraveling on Wednesday at the southern and northern shores of Lake Pangong in the Ladakh region.
India and China will remove forward deployments in a “phased, coordinated and verified manner”, Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh told parliament on Thursday.
The Chinese Ministry of Defense said in a statement on Wednesday that both parties had begun a “synchronized and organized” decoupling.
The tense uprising in the Karakoram Mountains began in early May when Indian officials said Chinese soldiers had crossed the border at three different points in Ladakh, erected tents and guard posts and ignored verbal warnings to leave. It caused screaming matches, stone-throwing and fist fights, many of which were repeated on television news channels and social media.
Tensions erupted on June 15 in a hand-to-hand battle with clubs, stones and fists that left 20 Indian soldiers dead. It is believed that China also had victims but gave no details.
Since then, both countries have stationed tens of thousands of their troops, supported by artillery, tanks and fighter jets, along the fiercely fought Line of Actual Control, or LAC, with troops set up for the harsh winter.
The LAC separates areas held by China and India from Ladakh in the west to the eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh of India, which China claims as a whole. It is broken into parts where Nepal and Bhutan border China. It divides areas of physical control rather than territorial claims.
India claims the Chinese-controlled Aksai Chin plateau as part of the Ladakh region. According to India, the control line is 3,488 km (2167 miles) long, while China says it is significantly shorter.
Relations between the two countries were often strained, in part because of their disputed border. They waged a border war in 1962 that spilled over into Ladakh and ended in a turbulent ceasefire. Since then, troops have guarded the undefined border and occasionally wrestled. They agreed not to attack each other with firearms.
But in September, China and India accused each other of sending troops to each other’s territory and fired warning shots for the first time in 45 years, sparking the spectacle of full-scale military conflict.
India unilaterally declared Ladakh a federal territory and separated it from the disputed Kashmir in August 2019, ending the semi-autonomous status of the Indian-run Kashmir. It also promises to take back the Aksai Chin plateau. China was one of the first countries to strongly condemn the move and post it on international forums, including the UN Security Council.