Indian Media: Chinese Military ‘Death Squads’ Used Barbed Wire Batons to Kill Indian Troops
Chinese troops from the People’s Liberation Army
(PLA) viciously attacked Indian soldiers stationed along the Galwan
River Valley in India’s northeastern Ladakh state on Monday night for
over eight hours, killing at least 23 Indian soldiers, India’s News18 reported.
PLA
“death squads” armed with “batons wrapped in barbed wire” and iron rods
“hunted down and slaughtered” Indian troops of the 16 Bihar Regiment, a
senior Indian government official familiar with the debriefing of
survivors of the attack allegedly told News18.
The
Chinese communist regime has not denied the account or offered any
significant details, including the number of casualties on the Chinese
side.
The
regiment’s commanding officer, Colonel Santosh Babu, was killed in
the “savage” hand-to-hand combat, the Indian Army confirmed late
Tuesday. Colonel Babu died after he “was pushed from [a] narrow ridge
and fell to his death in the gorge below,” the Guardian reports.
Many
others on the Indian side died “because of protracted exposure to
sub-zero temperatures” in the icy, high altitude terrain in the western
Himalayas, the Indian Army said.
“Even
unarmed men who fled into the hillsides were hunted down and killed,”
one unnamed Indian officer is quoted as saying. “The dead include men
who jumped into the Galwan River in a desperate effort to escape.”
According
to government sources, at least another two dozen soldiers are battling
“life-threatening” injuries at hospitals in Ladakh’s capital, Leh; over
110 soldiers have needed treatment for injuries sustained during the
attack.
“The [Indian death] toll will likely go up,” an Indian military officer with knowledge of the matter told News18.
According
to the report, the fighting in Galwan Valley began after Colonel Babu
commanded his troops over the weekend to dismantle a Chinese tent set up
near a position known as Patrol Point 14, located near the mouth of the
Galwan River. A different Chinese tent at the site had previously been
dismantled after the action was agreed to during a meeting between
Indian Lieutenant General Harinder Singh, who commands a Leh-based
military unit, and Major-General Lin Liu, the head of China’s Xinjiang
military district.
However,
just two days after the meeting, the PLA set up a new tent at Patrol
Point 14, inside territory claimed by India. Government sources say
Colonel Babu’s regiment was then ordered to “ensure the [new] tent was
removed.” The PLA refused to vacate Point 14, breaking a June 6 agreement
between both sides to deescalate their ongoing border dispute in the
area. According to sources, this refusal led to an ensuing “melee”
during which the new Chinese tent was burned down.
After
the tent was burned, the PLA began pelting Indian soldiers with stones
on Sunday, according to the report. This escalated on Monday when the
PLA launched a “massive” overnight attack on the Indian regiment’s
troops. Chinese soldiers dropped “large rocks” onto Indian troops
stationed on a “high ridge above Point 14,” one source said. Some Indian
troops reportedly fought back using “improvised weapons,” but most had
no significant means of defense. Per decades of tradition in the Galwan
Valley, neither side is armed. This is meant to “ward off the
possibility of escalation between the nuclear-armed neighbors,”
according to the Guardian.
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