Armies of China and India fire shots at tense Kashmir border

Beijing says it took "countermeasures" after Indian troops fired aerial shots during a confrontation with Chinese personnel on the border of disputed Kashmir.

China has said its troops were forced to take "countermeasures" after Indian soldiers crossed their tense Himalayan border and opened fire. Beijing's defence ministry accused India of "severe military provocation" after soldiers crossed the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the western border region on Monday and "opened fire to threaten the Chinese border defence patrol officers". "The Chinese border defence troops were forced to take corresponding countermeasures to stabilise the terrain situation," said Zhang Shuili, spokesperson for the Western Theater Command of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) on Tuesday.
Zhang said India had violated agreements reached by the two countries and warned their actions could "easily cause misunderstandings and misjudgments".
He called for India to withdraw the troops who crossed the border and investigate the officers who opened fire.
Shuili did not make clear what those measures were or whether Chinese troops also fired warning shots. READ MORE: Special Frontier Force: India’s ‘secret Tibetan’ guerilla squad Number of skirmishes  Both sides have sent tens of thousands of troops to the disputed Himalayan border, which sits at an altitude of more than 13,500 feet.
Their troops have had a number of showdowns since a clash in the Ladakh region on June 15 in which 20 Indian troops died. China has also acknowledged suffering casualties but not given figures.
The relationship between the two nuclear-armed neighbours has deteriorated since then. READ MORE: Chinese, Indian defence ministers meet in Russia amid border tensions Failed talks Defence ministers from both countries talked in Moscow on the sidelines of an international meeting last week –– with both sides later releasing rival statements accusing each other of inflaming the showdown.
And earlier this week an Indian minister said Delhi had alerted China to allegations five men had been abducted by the PLA close to the disputed border.
There was no immediate comment or confirmation of Monday's incident from the Indian military.
Experts say India's actions in Kashmir a year ago exacerbated existing tensions with China, culminating in the deadliest clash between the Asian giants in more than four decades.
The ongoing standoff in the Karakoram mountains is over disputed portions of a pristine landscape that boasts the world's highest landing strip, a glacier that feeds one of the largest irrigation systems in the world, and a critical link to China's massive "Belt and Road" infrastructure project. READ MORE: India uses arrival of French Rafale jets to warn China Nuclear-armed junction The Himalayan territory of Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan while China also controls a sliver of Kashmir called Aksai Chin. 
Kashmir's eastern edge, the cold, high-altitude desert region of Ladakh, borders China on one side and Pakistan and India on the other and is home to the world's only three-way, nuclear-armed junction.
Pakistan and India have rival claims to Kashmir that date to the British Raj’s Partition in 1947, and have gone to war twice over them. 
Each country administers a portion of the region. Many ethnic Kashmiri Muslims on the Indian side support an armed movement that demands the territory be united either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country. READ MORE: China-India clashes show contrasting interests as tensions easeSource: trtworld.com