India successfully launched an intercontinental ballistic missile Thursday capable of delivering a warhead to the northern regions of China. The test follows worsening relations between the two nuclear-armed giants.India fired off an Agni-5 three-stage missile from a mobile launcher on an island in the Bay of Bengal, the government said in a statement. India’s Defense Ministry hailed the launch on Twitter as “a major boost to the defence capabilities of our country.”Read: The 5 most contentious border standoffs on the planetThe test was India’s first since a tense border standoff with China that started in June and lasted 10 weeks, during which soldiers from both sides stared each other down over a parcel of land claimed by both China and Indian ally Bhutan.In December, Beijing said India “violated China’s territorial sovereignty” after an Indian drone crashed on the Chinese side of the border. India said the drone had simply experienced technical problems.Thursday’s test was India’s fifth launch of the Agni-5 over the past six years. Before Thursday, the most recent was in December 2016. The Agni-5 has a range of 5,000 kilometers, or about 3,100 miles, according to the ministry's tweets. The distance from India’s capital, New Delhi, to China’s capital, Beijing, is 2,348 miles.India’s ballistic missile program is “fundamentally… a means to deliver nuclear weapons to deter both Pakistan and China,” according to an analysis by Washington’s Center for International and Strategic Studies.India’s pursuit of mobile launch technology and missiles capable of delivering multiple warheads “can be thought of as responses to developments in the Chinese arsenal,” according to CSIS.Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified the name of India's Defense Minister, and wrongly attributed statements made by the office of the defense ministry to the minister personally. The story has been corrected to attribute those comments to the office of the ministry.
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