4 gunmen, 2 troops dead in attack on Indian air base

PATHANKOT, India (AP) – Indian troops killed four suspected militants who entered an air force base near the border with Pakistan and exchanged fire with security forces on Saturday, officials and news reports said. At least two Indian soldiers were also killed in an attack seen as an attempt to undo recent progress made in the relationship between rivals India and Pakistan.
The attack on the Pathankot air force base began before dawn, and by late morning it appeared that the violence had ended with the killing of the gunmen. But just two hours later, fresh gunfire erupted at the base.
A helicopter could be seen around noon firing at an area inside the base, located about 430 kilometers (267 miles) north of New Delhi. Shots could also be heard from inside the base. No other details were available and phone calls to Defense Ministry and air force officials went unanswered.
At least four gunmen entered the living quarters of the base, but were unable to penetrate the area where fighter helicopters and other military equipment are kept, said air force spokeswoman Rochelle D’Silva.
Press Trust of India news agency quoted police as saying that four attackers were killed following an hourslong gunbattle, and that police started an operation to clear a wider area of other possible intruders.
The attack was seen by many in India as an attempt to unravel the tentative progress in the country’s relationship with archrival Pakistan. The violence came just a week after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an unannounced visit to Pakistan to meet with his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif.
Modi’s visit was seen as a potential sign of thawing relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbors. The two leaders also held an unscheduled meeting at the Paris climate change talks last month.
“These kinds of attacks are nothing new and have generally been the outcome of the dispute of India and Pakistan over Kashmir,” said Noor Ahmed Baba, a political scientist at Central University in Indian Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar.
Baba said that there were elements in both countries that would like to see the peace process fizzle out.
“If this attack is a sabotage, India and Pakistan, as well as the Kashmiri leadership, will have to exhibit political maturity and sagacity to defeat the vested interests,” he added.
Ahead of Modi’s surprise visit to Pakistan, the national security advisers of both countries had met in Thailand to discuss issues including peace and security, terrorism, the disputed region of Kashmir and ways to maintain peace along the countries’ shared border.
The foreign secretaries of both countries are scheduled to meet in Islamabad later this month.
Pathankot, in Punjab state, is on the highway that connects India’s insurgency-wracked Jammu and Kashmir state with the rest of the country. It’s also very close to India’s border with Pakistan.
Police said they suspected the gunmen were militants, and were investigating whether they had come from the Indian portion of Kashmir or from Pakistan. Rebels routinely stage attacks in Indian-held Kashmir, where they’ve been fighting since 1989 for an independent Kashmir or its merger with Pakistan.
India accuses Pakistan of arming and training Kashmir’s insurgents, a charge Islamabad denies. More than 68,000 people have been killed in the violence in the Indian portion of Kashmir.
Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan, but is claimed in its entirety by both.
Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh told reporters Saturday that India wants peace with Pakistan, but “if there is any kind of terror attack on India, we will give it a fitting reply.”
In July, gunmen staged a similar attack at a police station and a moving bus near Gurdaspur, a border town in India’s Punjab state. The three attackers then killed four policemen and three civilians before being shot dead by security forces.