HUNT FOR GUNMEN CONTINUES AT AIR BASE NEAR INDIA-PAKISTAN BORDER
[The attack on the base follows
an impromptu visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Pakistan on Dec. 25 to visit Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif, the first such visit in almost 12 years. The meeting was
seen as a step toward the resumption of a stalled dialogue between the
countries.]
ByHari Kumar
Indian officers checked
employees of the Pathankot Air Force Base in Punjab
on Sunday.
Nearly a dozen people have
been killed, including four attackers, in the fighting.
NEW DELHI —
A shootout between Indian security forces and armed gunmen stretched into its
second day on Sunday at the Pathankot air force base in Punjab, nearIndia’s
border withPakistan.
At least seven Indian personnel and at least four gunmen have been killed in the fighting so far, officials said.
At least two gunmen were still
holding out against the security forces on Sunday, said Rajiv Mehrishi,India’s
home secretary, in a televised news conference in New Delhi.
“We are sure that still there are at least two more terrorists
as firing has come from two different places,” Mr. Mehrishi said.
The gunmen have also wounded eight air force personnel and 12
members of the National Security Guard, he said.
Mr. Mehrishi said that
four suspected militants wearing Indian Army uniforms were said to have
hijacked a vehicle belonging to a Punjab police officer in Gurdaspur District, near
Pathankot, on Thursday night. Hours later, the police officer and other passengers
were ejected from the car.
On Friday, the area was put on alert, Mr. Mehrishi said, and
gunmen infiltrated the air force base and began firing at 3:30
a.m.
on Saturday.
“The terrorists were located by
means of aerial surveillance, which had been mounted by air force overnight,
and they were immediately engaged,” Mr. Mehrishi said. He said that the
attackers were prevented from gaining access to what was believed to be their
intended target, the area of the base where aircraft and other military
equipment are kept.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
Among those killed was a
lieutenant colonel of the National Security Guard, India’s elite commando force. The
officer died in an explosion when he was checking the body of a terrorist, Mr.
Mehrishi said. One air force commando was also killed, as well as five armed
guards working for the Indian Air Force.
Attacks on security forces and
military bases are unusual in Punjab. Such assaults are more common in the border state of Jammu and Kashmir to Punjab’s north, which has a
long-running insurgency. India has long accusedPakistanof supporting militants in the region,
a claim that Pakistan denies.
The attack on the base follows an impromptu visit by Prime
Minister Narendra Modi to Pakistan on Dec. 25 to visit Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif, the first such visit in almost 12 years. The meeting was
seen as a step toward the resumption of a stalled dialogue between the
countries.
In July, gunmen in Indian Army uniforms fired on a civilian bus
and then took over a police station in Gurdaspur.
At the news conference on Sunday, Mr. Mehrishi said that Indian
intelligence had received reports “of infiltration of terrorists from both
Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba from Pakistan,” and that 40 people suspected
of being terrorists from those two groups had been killed from August to
December.
On Saturday, Pakistan condemned the attack on the
base and said that it wanted to continue to improve relations with India.
