China's high-speed, high-altitude railway to Tibet carried troops to the region for the first time, in a development likely to fuel concerns about the railway's impact on the restive Himalayan area.
The brief Xinhua News Agency report did not say how many soldiers were aboard the train that left a provincial city Friday for the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. The report cited unnamed sources in the People's Liberation Army as saying that the "railway will become a main option" for transporting troops to Tibet, replacing the air and road routes used since Chinese troops annexed Tibet 57 years ago.
The train presently carries about 75 percent of all goods between Tibet and other parts of China and boosted tourism 64 percent in the first 10 months of it start.