Pakistan urged to act after attack

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NEW DELHI, Jan 5, (Agencies): Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged his Pakistani counterpart Tuesday to take “firm and immediate action” against those behind an attack on an Indian air force base that left seven soldiers dead. Modi “strongly emphasised the need for Pakistan to take firm and immediate action against the organisations and individuals responsible for and linked to the Pathankot terrorist attack,” the Indian government said in a statement, after Modi spoke by telephone to Nawaz Sharif. An Indian official says six gunmen who attacked an air force base near the country’s border with Pakistan have been killed, and that an operation is underway to secure the compound. Seven Indian troops were also killed in the attack.

Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar also said Tuesday that no military hardware was damaged in the fighting at the Pathankot base, which has a fleet of India’s Russian-origin MiG- 21 fighter jets and Mi-25 and Mi-35 attack helicopters. The attack began before dawn Saturday and dragged on as government troops struggled to contain the heavily armed attackers in the sprawling compound. At least twice it appeared that the attack had ended, but fresh gunfire and explosions erupted both times. The attack took place despite early intelligence warnings.

Indian forces searched early Tuesday for the last of six suspected gunmen who attacked an air force base near the Pakistan border and killed seven government troops in the nearly four-day siege. Air force spokeswoman Rochelle D’Silva said Tuesday “there has been no firing since Monday night at the base.” Indian security forces say they have killed five attackers, the fifth on Monday, and believe one remains on Pathankot air force base’s sprawling premises. In the first apparent claim of responsibility, the United Jehad Council, an alliance of 13 Kashmir-based rebel groups, claimed its “highway squad” stormed the base. Alliance spokesman Syed Sadaqat Hussain issued a statement to Current News Service, based in the Indian portion of Kashmir, saying the attack carried a message for India that no security establishment was out of the militants’ reach.

The council is based in Pakistan’s portion of Kashmir, the Himalayan region divided between the countries and claimed in its entirety by both. Sharad Kumar, chief of India’s National Investigation Agency, said telephone intercepts suggested the attackers were from Pakistan. He did not give details in the interview with a television news channel TimesNow on Tuesday.

Leads
The Pakistan Foreign Ministry said the government was in touch with the Indian government and “is working on the leads provided by it.” “The challenge of terrorism calls for strengthening our resolve to a cooperative approach,” the statement issued Monday said.

The attack precedes a meeting between top foreign ministry bureaucrats of the two countries in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, on Jan 15 to discuss steps to settle outstanding issues, including Kashmir. The United Jehad Council said that by accusing Pakistan of every attack, India neither succeeded in maligning the Kashmir freedom struggle nor would it gain anything in the future. India without delay “should provide an opportunity to the people of Kashmir to decide their future,” Hussain said.

India accuses Pakistan of arming and training insurgents in its portion of Kashmir. Pakistan denies that and says it only provides moral and diplomatic support. The search operations will continue until all areas have been completely secured, Maj Gen Dushyant Singh, from India’s National Security Guard, told reporters.

The attack began early Saturday morning and has dragged on as troops struggled to find the heavily armed attackers in the sprawling base, with forests and fields, homes for personnel based there and a school for their children. The base has a fleet of India’s Russian- origin MiG-21 fighter jets and Mi-25 and Mi-35 attack helicopters, along with other military hardware. Officials said no military hardware was damaged in the fighting.

The day before a deadly assault on an air base in northern India, a police officer returning from a temple was abducted by a group of heavily armed men speaking Urdu, he said on Tuesday. “The minute I saw them I realised that they were terrorists,” Police Superintendent Salwinder Singh told media. “One of the gunmen snatched my phone and made calls to Pakistan,” Singh said. Urdu, widely spoken in Pakistan, can be mostly understood by Hindi speakers. The colleague Singh called after he was freed treated it as an armed robbery, one in a string of security lapses preceding the Jan. 2 assault on the Pathankot air base that killed 7 Indian security personnel and injured 22. Mobile phone tower records indicate the perpetrators made calls from Singh’s phone from inside the air base by mid-afternoon on Jan. 1, according to the Indian Express, some 12 hours before the government said it had detected them through aerial surveillance.

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