A gold medal-winning Indian shooter was among 11 people killed in an audacious pre-dawn assault on an air force base, officials said yesterday as troops worked to clear the compound near India’s border with Pakistan after a 15-hour gunbattle.
Six Indian security personnel were killed and the bodies of four militants had been recovered after the assault on the heavily fortified Pathankot air base in the northwestern state of Punjab.
Four Indian soldiers, including a top officer, have died of injuries after the attack, taking the total death toll to 11, officials said yesterday.
Photo: AFP
The attack by gunmen disguised as soldiers came a week after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an unscheduled visit to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in an effort to revive talks between the nuclear-armed neighbors.
One of the Indian security members killed in the attack was Subedar Fateh Singh, who won gold and silver medals in the first Commonwealth Shooting Championships held in 1995, the National Rifle Association of India said.
Officials said the attack on the military base, just 25km from the border with Pakistan, bore the hallmarks of previous suspected assaults by Pakistan-based militant groups, underscoring the fragility of recent efforts to revive bilateral talks between the often uneasy neighbors.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
Pakistan condemned the attack and said it wanted to continue to build on the goodwill created by the impromptu meeting between Modi and Sharif last month.
Two security personnel were wounded in a blast yesterday, a police official in Pathankot said, as troops scoured the base.
Dozens of armed forces stood guard outside the base.
Indian Minister of Home Affairs Rajnath Singh on Saturday said that five militants had been “neutralized,” but there were no reports yet of the body of the fifth attacker being found.
In New Delhi, two trains were delayed early yesterday after officials received information about a possible bomb threat on a train running between the capital and Lucknow to the southeast, railways spokesman Neeraj Sharma said.
Trains were deemed safe and were running on schedule by mid-morning, Sharma said.
The deadly assault on an the air base on Saturday was “a heinous” terrorist attack, the US said, urging the two rivals to work together to hunt down those responsible.
The possible involvement of Pakistan-based militants threatens to derail talks between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan, who have fought three wars since independence in 1947.
“The United States is committed to our strong partnership with the Indian government to combat terrorism,” US Department of State spokesman John Kirby said in a statement, condemning the assault.
“We urge all countries in the region to work together to disrupt and dismantle terrorist networks and to bring to justice the perpetrators of this heinous act,” he said.
An Indian army official, who declined to be named, said one of the dead was a lieutenant-colonel in the elite commando unit National Security Guard.
The official said the officer and two other soldiers were injured yesterday when a bomb they were trying to defuse exploded during a search of the site.
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