China and India are withdrawing front troops along disputed parts of their mountain border, where they have been at an impasse for months, officials in both countries said.
On Wednesday, the forces began the withdrawal from the southern and northern shores of Lake Pangong in Ladakh region, officials said.
India and China would remove forward commitment in a “staged, coordinated and verified manner,” Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh told parliament on Thursday.
China’s Defense Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday that both sides had begun a “synchronized and organized” pullout.
The tense standoff high in the Karakoram Mountains began in early May when Indian officials said Chinese soldiers had crossed the border at three different points in Ladakh, erecting tents and guards, and ignoring verbal warnings to leave. That caused screaming matches, stone throwing and fist fights, much of which was replayed on television news channels and on social media.
Tensions split on June 15 in hand-to-hand battles with clubs, stones and fists, killing 20 Indian soldiers. China is also said to have made victims, but has not given details.
Since then, both countries have deployed tens of thousands of their soldiers, supported by artillery, tanks, and fighter jets, along the hotly contested Line of Actual Control, or LAC, with troops settling in for the harsh winter.
The LAC separates China-occupied areas from Ladakh in the west to India’s eastern Arunachal Pradesh state, which China claims in full. It is broken in parts where Nepal and Bhutan border China. It divides areas of physical control rather than territorial claims.
India claims the China-controlled Aksai Chin Plateau as part of the Ladakh region. According to India, the control line is 3,488 km (2,167 miles) long, while China says it is considerably shorter.
Relations between the two countries are often tense, in part because of their controversial border. They fought a border war in 1962 that culminated in Ladakh and ended in an uneasy truce. Since then, troops have guarded the undefined border and occasionally fought. They have agreed not to attack each other with firearms.
But in September, China and India accused each other of sending soldiers into each other’s territory and fired warning shots for the first time in 45 years, sparking the horror of a large-scale military conflict.
India unilaterally declared Ladakh a federal territory and seceded it from disputed Kashmir in August 2019, ending the semi-autonomous status of Indian-administered Kashmir. It also promised to take back the Aksai Chin plateau. China was one of the first countries to strongly condemned the move and raised it in international forums, including the UN Security Council.