SRINAGAR, India, April 23 (Reuters) – Twenty-six men were killed and 17 were injured when suspected militants opened fire at tourists in India’s Jammu and Kashmir territory, police said on Wednesday, the worst such attack in the country in nearly two decades.
It was the worst attack on civilians in India since the 2008 Mumbai shootings, and shattered the relative calm in Kashmir, where tourism has boomed as an anti-India insurgency, opens new tab has waned in recent years.The attack took place on Tuesday in the Baisaran valley in the Pahalgam area of the scenic, Himalayan federal territory and the dead included 25 Indians and one Nepalese national, police said.
The attack is seen as a setback to what Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party have projected as a major achievement in revoking the semi-autonomous status Jammu and Kashmir enjoyed and bringing peace and development to the long-troubled Muslim-majority region.Modi cut short his two-day visit to Saudi Arabia and returned to New Delhi on Wednesday morning. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman was also cutting short her visit to the United States and Peru “to be with our people in this difficult and tragic time”, her ministry said.
Modi held a meeting with the national security adviser, the foreign minister and other senior officials at the airport and a special security cabinet meeting had been called for 1230 GMT, a defence ministry official said.”It was not a typical tourist group but rather an undercover agency tasked with research,” it said and added that the attack should “serve as a wake-up call not only for Delhi but also for those who support Delhi’s questionable strategies”.
“Resistance fighters plan to intensify their strategic attacks to ensure that those involved in undermining … (the) resistance struggle face appropriate consequences,” it warned.
Hundreds of security forces rushed to the Pahalgam area soon after the attack and a massive combing operation was launched in the forests there, two security sources told Reuters. About 100 people suspected to have been militant sympathisers in the past were called to police stations and questioned, they added.
Police also released sketches of three of the four suspected
attackers.
The attackers were dressed in traditional long shirts and loose trousers and one of them was wearing a bodycam, one security source said, adding that there were about 1,000 tourists and about 300 local service providers and workers when the attack took place.
They opened fire at three spots in Baisaran valley which is popular among tourists for its lush meadows and pristine landscape surrounded by dense pine forests on all sides.
Visitors have to trek or hire ponies to reach the spot where there are adventure sports facilities such as ziplining and zorbing.
Indian security agencies say Kashmir Resistance is a front for Pakistan-based militant organisations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen. Pakistan has said it only provides moral and diplomatic support to the insurgency in Kashmir.
“We are concerned at the loss of tourists’ lives,” Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman Shafqat Ali Khan said in a statement. “We extend our condolences to the near ones of the deceased and wish the injured a speedy recovery
