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.
A signaling system malfunction disrupted high-speed rail (HSR) services beginning at 8am today, with trains temporarily reduced to three northbound and three southbound trains per hour as authorities conduct inspections. The malfunction occurred on a section of track in Miaoli County during pre-operation checks early this morning, forcing northbound and southbound trains to use a single track, the HSR operator said. The regular schedule has been replaced with three hourly trains offering only nonreserved seating in each direction, stopping at every station, it said, adding that business class cars would still have reserved seating. Departures from terminal stations are scheduled at the top
Taiwan is still in the process of assessing the possibility of recruiting workers from Eswatini, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday, adding that its goal is to help Eswatini upgrade its vocational training centers. If there are plans to recruit workers from Eswatini, safeguarding national security, protecting public health and ensuring the employment rights of Taiwanese would be prerequisites, Department of West Asian and African Affairs Director-General Yen Chia-liang (顏嘉良) told a news conference. Key considerations would also include filling labor shortages in specific industries, and fostering bilateral professional and technical exchanges, he said. Yen was asked about the progress of labor
A US uncrewed surface vessel (USV) encountered multiple Chinese warships during an autonomous transit of the Taiwan Strait, US defense company Seasats said in a statement on Wednesday. Seasats announced that a Lightfish USV had completed the first autonomous transit of the Taiwan Strait. Over five days, the USV traversed the entire length of the Strait while constantly monitoring surface vessel traffic, the company said. The Lightfish encountered multiple Chinese warships, one of which was a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Type 056 corvette, it said. The Chinese vessels were operating “well within Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone without transmitting their identity via the
VERBOSE VESSELS: A CGA cutter and a China Coast Guard exchanged verbal barbs for more than a day in Taiwanese-controlled waters before the Chinese vessel left The Taiwanese and Chinese coast guards had a standoff near the strategically located Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the north of the South China Sea, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The two sides engaged in intense radio exchanges over sovereignty claims during the 33-hour standoff. China Coast Guard vessel 3501 eventually left the restricted waters, 26.6 nautical miles (49.2km) west of the Pratas Islands, at 5pm yesterday, the CGA said. Lying approximately between southern Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Taiwan-controlled Pratas are seen by some security experts as vulnerable to Chinese attack due to their distance — more than
RSS