Indian police overcame a group of heavily armed men dressed in military fatigues yesterday after a 12-hour gun 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 5am local time.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his top ministers have not made detailed statements on the attack, which is certain to raise tensions with Pakistan if it is proven to have originated across the border.
Pakistan has denied any involvement in insurgencies in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir, and said it was not aware of any reports that its citizens were involved in the attack.
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 paddy fields surrounding it, some 15km from the international border, witnesses said.
Three policemen and three civilians were killed, according to India’s Home Ministry. Police sources said the attackers entered India from Pakistan two days ago a short distance to the north in the state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Jitendra Singh, a junior minister in Modi’s office, said he would not rule out Pakistani involvement.
“There have also been earlier reports of Pakistan infiltration and cross-border mischief in this area,” said Singh, whose constituency is in the Jammu border region of Gurdaspur.
Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Salahuddin, who is based in Pakistan, denied involvement in the attack.
“They are not Kashmiris ... They could be home-grown militants,” he said.
Attacks on security installations by militants dressed as soldiers or police are common in Jammu, but this was the first such assault in Punjab in 13 years, according to data from the South Asia Terrorism Portal, which tracks militant violence.