India’s defense minister yesterday vowed a swift response to those who carried out and planned the Kashmir region’s worst attack on civilians in years.
“Those responsible and behind such an act will very soon hear our response, loud and clear,” Indian Minister of Defense Rajnath Singh said in a speech in New Delhi, a day after shooters killed 26 men at a tourist hot spot in the contested Himalayan region.
“We won’t just reach those people who carried out the attack. We will also reach out to those who planned this from behind the scenes on our land,” he said.
Photo: AFP
Singh did not identify those he believes are responsible for the killings, but said that “India’s government will take every step that may be necessary and appropriate.”
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack in the Muslim-majority region where rebels have waged an insurgency since 1989.
They are seeking independence or a merger with Pakistan, which controls a smaller part of the Kashmir region and, like India, claims it in full.
Photo: AP
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pledged that those responsible for the “heinous act” will “be brought to justice.”
Modi was later yesterday set to hold an emergency Cabinet meeting with top security chiefs.
“Their evil agenda will never succeed,” Modi said in a statement shortly after the attack. “Our resolve to fight terrorism is unshakable and it will get even stronger.”
Nuclear-armed archrivals India and Pakistan have long accused each other of backing forces to destabilize the other, and New Delhi says Islamabad backs the people behind the insurgency. Islamabad denies the allegation, saying it only supports Kashmir’s struggle for self-determination.
Pakistani Minister of Foreign Affairs Ishaq Dar yesterday offered his “condolences to the near ones of the deceased.”
Analyst Michael Kugelman said the attack posed a “very serious risk of a new crisis between India and Pakistan, and probably the most serious risk of a crisis since the brief military conflict that happened in 2019.”
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said the attack had been “much larger than anything we’ve seen directed at civilians” in the past few years.
A hospital list verified by police recorded 26 men who were killed on Tuesday afternoon when gunmen burst out of forests at a popular tourist spot in Pahalgam and raked crowds of visitors with automatic weapons.
All those killed were listed as residents of India except one man from Nepal.
In a separate incident in Kashmir at Baramulla yesterday, the army killed two people after a “heavy exchange of fire,” saying the shooters were part of an “infiltration bid” crossing the contested frontier from Pakistan.
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