Indian security forces yesterday launched a massive hunt 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 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 region. Modi cut short his two-day visit to Saudi Arabia and returned to New Delhi yesterday morning. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman was also cutting short her visit to the US 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 held later in the day, 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.Security forces rushed to the Pahalgam area soon after the attack and began combing the forests there, two security sources said. 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.
