India says it killed militants behind the lethal assault on civilians in Kashmir

MUMBAI, India — Three months after militants killed 26 vacationers at a scenic meadow within the Himalayas, India mentioned on Tuesday that its safety forces had discovered and killed three gunmen behind the bloodbath.

The assault came about in Pahalgam district of India-administered Kashmir on April 22. It created nationwide outrage after eyewitnesses recalled the militants showing to focus on Hindu males. India insisted that Pakistan was behind the assault, a declare Pakistan denied. The killings additionally triggered a quick tit-for-tat navy confrontation between the 2 nuclear rivals.

In a speech in Parliament on Tuesday, residence minister Amit Shah mentioned the three slain “terrorists” have been from Pakistan, and that voter ID playing cards and goodies recovered from them have been proof. He added that the cartridges recovered from them matched with these discovered on the website of the April killings. Locals who had supplied meals and shelter to the gunmen earlier than the April killings had confirmed their identities, he mentioned.

It’s the first time an Indian minister has publicly supplied proof to hyperlink the April attackers to Pakistan. Pakistan hasn’t commented on the recent claims. Final week, its overseas workplace mentioned ithad already dismantled Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani militant group India says was behind the assaults.

The lethal assault in April escalated to a four-day navy battle between India and Pakistan within the second week of Might. Dozens died and hundreds have been displaced.

The combating stopped after 4 days. U.S. President Trump claimed credit score for the ceasefire in a social media submit. He later mentioned that he had used commerce negotiations as leverage, which India disputed. Pakistan deliberate to nominate Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize for his intervention.

In current months, the Hindu-nationalist authorities of Narendra Modi had come below stress from India’s political opposition on the intelligence failure that led to the April assaults, its incapacity to catch the attackers for months and its diplomatic failures within the aftermath of its strikes on Pakistan.

Indian safety officers are proven inspecting the positioning the place militants indiscriminately opened fired on vacationers the day gone by, in Pahalgam, Indian-controlled Kashmir on April 23, 2025.

AP File/AP

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The continuing session of Parliament was the primary time the federal government had scheduled a debate on these points. The killings of the militants coincided with the beginning of the controversy. In his 70-minute speech on Tuesday, residence minister Shah didn’t acknowledge shortcomings on safety. Exterior affairs minister S Jaishankar, too, has defended his diplomacy.

Praveen Donthi, an analyst with the suppose tank Worldwide Disaster Group, says there are a lot of unanswered questions nonetheless. The Indian authorities, he says, ought to launch the complete names of the militants, their weapons and voter ID numbers, and provides a extra structured account of the Kashmir assault and subsequent investigation.

Donthi says it additionally wants to clarify why safety forces blew up the household homes of suspected Kashmiri militants if all three perpetrators have been from Pakistan. “Otherwise all this will be looked upon by the international community as an effort to score political points domestically.”

India’s opposition, in the meantime, has requested the federal government to repair accountability for its shortcomings.

“For the first time in the history of our country, the war was stopped abruptly and the announcement of the decision was done by the U.S. President,” mentioned Priyanka Gandhi, a parliamentarian from the opposition Congress Celebration. “Leadership is not just about taking credit but responsibility also needs to be taken.”