India-China clash: Modi says soldiers’ deaths ‘will not be in vain’

India’s prime minister has said the deaths of at least 20 soldiers in a fight with Chinese troops in a disputed Himalayan border area “will not be in vain”.

Narendra Modi said India would be “proud that our soldiers died fighting the Chinese” in the clash in the Ladakh region on Monday.

Soldiers reportedly brawled with sticks, bats and bamboo sticks studded with nails. No shots were fired.

Both sides blamed each other.

It is the first deadly clash between the two sides in the border area, in the disputed Kashmir region, in at least 45 years.

India’s army said China also suffered casualties but Beijing has given no details.

The Indian statement notes that injured soldiers were “exposed to sub-zero temperatures in the high altitude terrain”.

• An extraordinary escalation ‘with rocks and clubs’
• A freezing, inhospitable battlefield on a mountain

As each side traded accusations, India said China had tried to “unilaterally change the status quo”. Beijing accused Indian troops of “attacking Chinese personnel”.

The two armies later held talks to try to defuse tensions.

What happened?

The fighting occurred in the precipitous, rocky terrain of the strategically important Galwan Valley, which lies between China’s Tibet and India’s Ladakh.

Indian media say soldiers engaged in direct hand-to-hand combat, with some “beaten to death”. During the fight, one newspaper reported, others fell or were pushed into a river.

The Indian army initially said a colonel and two soldiers had died. It later said that “17 Indian troops who were critically injured in the line of duty” and died from their injuries, taking the “total that were killed in action to 20”.

Indian forces appear to have been massively outnumbered by Chinese troops.

A senior Indian military official told the BBC there were 55 Indians versus 300 Chinese, who he described as “the Death Squad”.

“They hit our boys on the head with metal batons wrapped in barbed wire. Our boys fought with bare hands,” the officer, who did not want to be named, said.

His account, which could not be verified, tallies with other reports in the Indian media detailing the savagery of the combat.