NEW DELHI: Pakistan ‘will pay’ for an attack on an army base in Indian-held Kashmir that killed nine including five soldiers and a civilian, India’s defence minister said on Monday.
A firefight erupted Saturday when heavily armed gunmen stormed the base in Jammu, the second-largest city in the occupied valley.
Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who visited the injured in the hospital, said that counter-terror operations at the camp had been called off on Monday. “Our intelligence inputs indicate that these terrorists were being controlled by their handlers from across the border,” she told reporters.
“Pakistan is expanding the arc of terror… resorting to ceasefire violations (on the border) to assist infiltration. Pakistan will pay for this misadventure,” she said.
Sitharaman also corrected the earlier death toll given by police, who said 10 including four attackers had been killed in the attack.
“The attackers have been eliminated although there was information of four men in the area… likely that the fourth (attacker) was a guide and didn’t enter the premises,” the minister said, putting the overall toll at nine.
The intruders took positions inside a residential complex meant for soldiers’ families as the army launched a counter-offensive to drive them out.
Hindu-majority Jammu, located in the foothills of the mountainous region, is relatively peaceful but has repeatedly seen assaults on military bases.
Saturday’s attack comes 18 years after a similar attack on the base in 2003 that killed 12 soldiers.
In late 2016, India said its soldiers destroyed bases inside Azad Jammu and Kashmir after 19 soldiers were killed in an assault on an army base.
Published in Daily Times, February 13th 2018.
