By Fayaz Bukhari
SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) -Indian security forces launched a massive hunt on Wednesday for militants suspected of killing 26 men at a tourist destination in Kashmir in the worst attack on civilians in the country in nearly two decades, with New Delhi pledging a strong response.
At least 17 people were also injured in the shooting that took place on Tuesday in the Baisaran valley in the Pahalgam area of the scenic, Himalayan federal territory of Jammu and Kashmir. The dead included 25 Indians and one Nepalese national, police said.
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 has waned in recent years.
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 was called for 1230 GMT, a defence ministry official said.
“We will not only reach those who have perpetrated this incident but also those who, sitting behind the scenes, have conspired to commit such acts on the soil of India,” Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said ahead of the meeting.
“There will be a loud and clear response soon,” he said at a memorial lecture for a former Indian Air Force chief.
India has in the past accused Islamist militant groups based in Pakistan, which it says are trained and supported by the establishment in Islamabad, for attacks in India, including those in Mumbai.
Pakistan denies the accusations and says it only provides moral, political and diplomatic support to the insurgency in Kashmir.
HUNT FOR ATTACKERS
Security forces rushed to the Pahalgam area soon after the attack and began combing 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, who were dressed in traditional long shirts and loose trousers and one of them was wearing a bodycam, one security source said. There were about 1,000 tourists and about 300 local service providers and workers in the valley when the attack took place, he said.
A little-known militant group, the “Kashmir Resistance,” claimed responsibility for the attack in a social media message. It expressed discontent that more than 85,000 “outsiders” had been settled in the region, spurring a “demographic change”.
In a fresh statement on Wednesday, the group said that the “individuals targeted were not ordinary tourists; instead, they were linked to and affiliated with Indian security agencies” and said it would step up its activities.
“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”.
India’s government has not commented on the group’s claims.
Indian security agencies say Kashmir Resistance, also known as The Resistance Front, is a front for Pakistan-based militant organisations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen.
“We are concerned at the loss of tourists’ lives,” Pakistani foreign ministry spokesperson 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.”
KASHMIR SHUTDOWN
On Wednesday, over a dozen local organisations called for a shutdown in the federal territory to protest against the attack on tourists, whose rising numbers have helped the local economy.
Many schools also suspended classes for the day in protest.
The shutdown was total and protesters turned out in several locations shouting slogans such as “Stop killing innocents”, “Tourists are our lives”, “It is an attack on us”.
“I want to say to the people of the country that we are ashamed, Kashmir is ashamed,” former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti said in a statement. “We are standing with you in this time of crisis.”
Airlines were operating extra flights from Srinagar, the summer capital of the territory, as visitors were rushing out of the region, officials said.
“It’s heartbreaking to see the exodus of our guests,” serving Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said on X, adding that the main highway connecting Srinagar to the rest of the country which was damaged by heavy rain had been opened for one-way traffic out of Srinagar to help tourists leaving by road.
While some local tourist operators said they were already getting cancellations for the upcoming peak summer season, the local unit of the Travel Agents Federation of India condemned the attack.
“We will continue to encourage travel to the Valley and stand strong against those who seek to spread fear and unrest,” local unit chairman Shamim Shah said in a statement.
Militant violence has afflicted Kashmir, claimed in full but ruled in part by both Hindu-majority India and Islamic Pakistan, since the anti-Indian insurgency began in 1989. Tens of thousands of people have been killed, although violence has tapered off in recent years.
India revoked Kashmir’s special status in 2019, splitting the state into two federally administered territories – Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh. The move allowed local authorities to issue domicile rights to outsiders, allowing them to get jobs and buy land in the territory, but led to a deterioration of ties with Pakistan.
(Reporting by Fayaz Bukhari; Additional reporting by Nigam Prusty and Surbhi Misra in New Delhi, Sudipto Ganguly and Shilpa Jamkhandikar in Mumbai, and Charlotte Greenfield in Islamabad; Writing by YP Rajesh; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Sharon Singleton)
