memon_ishaque's JumboTweets
- Headline: Nine killed in day-long Indian gun battle near Pakistani border.
Indian police overcame a group of gunmen dressed in military fatigues on Monday (July 27) after a 12-hour battle that ended in a small-town police station near the border with Pakistan, and at least nine people were killed.
Police in the frontier state of Punjab killed three unidentified assailants who had pulled up at the police complex in a stolen car, automatic weapons blazing, at about 5 a.m. (2330 GMT Sunday).
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his top ministers have not made detailed statements on the attack, which came weeks after he met Pakistan's premier Nawaz Sharif in an attempt to revive stalled relations between the nuclear-armed rivals.
Pakistan issued a statement condemning the assault and extending condolences to the government and people of India, pushing back against suggestions by some Indian security sources that the assailants had crossed from Pakistani territory.
In the first such attack in Indian Punjab in more than a decade, the gunmen shot dead a barber and tried to hijack a bus before rushing the police station, witnesses said.
Throughout the day, regular bouts of small arms fire echoed across the town of Dinanagar and the surrounding paddy fields, some 15 km (10 miles) from the international border, Reuters witnesses said.
Regional police chief Sumedh Singh Saini told reporters at the scene it was "too early to say" where the gunmen had come from.
They were equipped with automatic weapons, ammunition, and grenades. Two GPS satellite location devices found on the men would be examined for clues, he said.
Three policemen and three civilians were also killed, according to the home ministry.
"We were not aware of the number of militants. Later it was confirmed, then we began our operation. Now, it is over. We were engaged in it since the morning. Now, we have succeeded. We did a recce of the entire building because we didn't know who was hiding where in the building," said security officer Kapil Kumar.
Police sources said the attackers entered from Pakistan two days ago, a short distance to the north in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, where separatist guerrillas are seeking independence from India.
Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Salahuddin, who is based in Pakistan, denied his men were involved.
Attacks on security installations by militants dressed as soldiers or police are common in Jammu, but Monday's was the first such assault in Punjab in 13 years, according to data from the South Asia Terrorism Portal, which tracks militant violence.