Galwan Valley Face-off: 76 Soldiers Injured

NEW DELHI: Seventy-six army soldiers injured during Monday night's clash with Chinese troops at Ladakh's Galwan Valley are in diferent hospitals. According to the sources, none of them are currently critical and they should all be able to get back on duty. Of the injured soldiers, 18 soldiers who are at the Leh hospital are expected to be at their posts within 15 days. The officials said that the remaining 56 are spread across other hospitals have minor injuries and they would join work in a week.

Twenty soldiers had died in Monday night's clash which began after the Indian troops led by Colonel BK Santosh Babu attempted to remove a tent belonging to Chinese troops. In the violent clashes near Patrol Point 14 - a vantage point in Indian territory that overlooks Chinese positions on their side of the LAC, Indian soldiers were attacked with Iron rods, nail-studded clubs and rocks wrapped in barbed wire.

Although Beijing has given no official information, army sources said that at least 45 Chinese soldiers have been injured. The Army had clarified that all the soldiers involved in the deadly clash have now been accounted for. The Army in a statement said that, "No Indian troops have been missing in action."

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has said that, "India and China are in regular contact through military and diplomatic channels of communication to diffuse the tension in the Galwan Valley and other areas in eastern Ladakh. External Affairs Ministry S Jaishankar is scheduled to attend the Russia-India-China (RIC) virtual conference with the foreign ministers of the two countries on June 23.

Following the standoff in eastern Ladakh, India and China have deployed additional troops along the LAC, the de-facto Sino-India border, in North Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh in the last few days.

India and China have blamed each other for the most serious fighting in more than 50 years along LAC. The movement of boycott of Chinese goods is going on and thousands of people have attended the funerals on Thursday for many of the 20 Indian soldiers killed in the clash. Chinese flags and posters of China’s President Xi Jinping were burned in a few cities.