Modi Visits Military Base in Ladakh Close to China Border

Without any prior declaration, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited a military base in the isolated Ladakh area bordering China on Friday, where troops from both countries have been facing off for almost two months.

A photo uploaded to Modi's Instagram account showed that Modi, accompanied by India's military leadership, interacted with soldiers sitting in a camouflage tent in the military base.

“Interacting with our brave armed forces personnel,” he wrote.

Modi 's visit comes in the light of a major Indian army build-up in the Ladakh area following a hand-to-hand fight between Indian and Chinese soldiers on 15 June that left 20 Indian soldiers dead and hundreds injured, the worst military clash in more than four decades between Asian giants.

No further specifics of Modi 's visit were visible. Both India and China have officially provided little information, but the media in both countries have given wide coverage to escalating tensions, much of which has been replayed on TV news channels and social media.

Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party leader, B.L. Santhosh, tweeted Friday that Modi would also meet injured soldiers and called the visit a “big, big booster to soldiers morale. He leads from the front.”

According to Indian officials, Chinese soldiers on the ridge at the mouth of the narrow valley threw stones, punched and pushed Indian soldiers down the ridge at about 4500 meters (15,000 feet).

Since the confrontation, India has sent vast reinforcements of soldiers, military equipment and fighter jets to the already highly militarized region.

The disputed border covers nearly 3,500 kilometers (2,175 miles) of frontier that the two countries call the Line of Actual Control and that stretches from Ladakh in the north to the Indian state of Sikkim in the northeast.

Source: AP