India Says It Killed 3 Militants Behind Spring Terrorist Attack in Kashmir

Asia Pacific|India Says It Killed 3 Militants Behind Spring Terrorist Attack in Kashmir

Indian security forces gunned down three assailants they said were involved in a deadly terrorist attack in Kashmir this spring, officials said on Tuesday, three months after the slaughter of civilians in a scenic park started a military conflict with neighboring Pakistan.

Amit Shah, India’s home minister, told the country’s Parliament that security forces had followed the men in “high-altitude forest” in the months since the April attack that killed 26 civilians, almost all of them tourists. The soldiers finally killed them in a shootout on Monday near the city of Srinagar, the capital city of India’s Jammu and Kashmir region.

Some Indian news outlets reported the killings on Monday, when the Indian Parliament began a debate on the government’s handling of its conflict with Pakistan. But officials had urged caution, as they were still identifying the bodies to confirm they were those wanted over the attack in the Pahalgam area.

Mr. Shah told Parliament on Tuesday that all three of the militants killed were Pakistani nationals and were all were involved in the terrorist attack.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration has come under pressure from the opposition for failing to track down the attackers for so long and because of how it conducted the clash with Pakistan, including how the escalations between the two nuclear-armed neighbors ended under pressure from President Trump.

Even after India went into battle with Pakistan, accusing its neighbor of supporting militants who target India, many details about the incident were not publicly disclosed, including the exact number of attackers and their identities. There have also been questions over how such a security lapse could happen in one of the world’s most militarized regions. Mr. Shah, the home minister, did not make it clear whether any of other attackers remained unaccounted for.