Tensions between nuclear-armed neighbours India and Pakistan have escalated following Tuesday’s terrorist attack in the northern disputed Kashmir region, in which 26 tourists were killed and 17 others injured.
Both countries’ armies were on high alert along their common frontier, following the attack by six gunmen in the mountainous Pahalgam region. India said it holds the Pakistan Army’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate responsible for the attack but has not produced any evidence to back its claim.
Pakistan officially denied any involvement in the attack, and its ministry of foreign affairs expressed condolences for the victims.
India’s Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) , chaired by prime minister Narendra Modi, said the bilateral Indus Waters Treaty, the river water-sharing agreement brokered by the World Bank in 1960, would be suspended. It also said the only land border crossing between the countries would be immediately closed.
India’s foreign secretary Vikram Misri told reporters in Delhi that the CCS had also decided that no Indian visas would be issued to Pakistani nationals and all those who were in the country would need to return home by May 1st.
It also announced that staff at the respective high commissions in Islamabad and New Delhi will be reduced to 30 personnel and all military attaches from both countries at these missions will be immediately withdrawn.
Meanwhile, senior Indian security and military officials claimed that the little-known Resistance Front, which had claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attack, was a “proxy” for two globally proscribed Pakistan-based Islamist terror groups: Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (Army of Mohammed). The officials claimed both groups were backed by the ISI.
India charged Lashkar-e-Taiba members with the November 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks in which 166 people died. Jaish-e-Mohammad operatives were blamed on an attack on the parliament building in 2001.
Both assaults brought India and Pakistan, who have fought four wars since independence in 1947, close to conflict yet again.
[ Attack on tourists at Pahalgam in Indian Kashmir kills 26, police sayOpens in new window ]
Mobile telephone recordings by survivors of the attack revealed that it was carried out by six gunmen dressed in Indian Army fatigues, armed with AK-47 assault rifles and equipped with body-mounted cameras.
The gunmen gathered the scattered tourists, who were spread over a mountainside accessible only by foot and horseback, claiming that they were from the Indian Army and deployed for their safety.
They asked each one their name and called upon some of them to recite Islamic verses. As almost all the assembled tourists were Hindus and unable to recite the Koranic passage, they were shot dead.
There were also reports of some of the victims being checked for circumcision and killed afterwards.
Kashmir, which is divided between India and Pakistan, but claimed in its entirety by both, has been wracked since 1989 by an insurgency seeking a Muslim homeland. Nearly 45,000 people have died in the clashes.
India blames Pakistan for fomenting the unrest, but Islamabad denies this, claiming merely to provide diplomatic and moral support to Kashmir’s insurrection.
