10 killed in attack on Indian police post in Gurdaspur

GURDASPUR: Ten people, including three civilians, were killed on Monday when three gunmen wearing army uniforms stormed a police station in northern India near the border with Pakistan, sparking a shootout lasting almost 11 hours.
The attack is likely to cast a cloud on resumption of talks between the two South Asian countries.Police said the three attackers were killed in the battle with security forces that began in the early hours of Monday and terrified local residents.
Four police officers, including the local superintendent, also died in the operation in the usually calm northern state of the Punjab. “The police superintendent fought them bravely but unfortunately he was shot in the head and he died on the spot,” said Anand Kumar, part of the Special Forces team that entered the building.
According to police, the attackers first targeted a roadside eatery and took off in a Maruti 800 with a Punjab registration number. They shot dead a roadside vendor near the Dinanagar bypass. They then opened fire on a bus before targeting a community health centre adjacentto the Dinanagar police station. The assault only ended at around 5pm when security forces
finally entered the police station where the unidentified gunmen had been holed up. One civilian was killed when the attackers opened fire at a bus station while the other two died at the police station, said Sumedh Singh Saini, DG Punjab Police.
He told reporters that it was “too early to say” who the attackers were. Five live bombs were recovered from nearby railway tracks, forcing train services to be cancelled.It was the first major attack in the Indian Punjab for more than a decade and the state’s Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal blamed a lack of security on the border.
“This militancy is a national problem, not a state problem, so it needs to be tackled with a national policy,” he told reporters. “If prior intelligence input had been given, they should have properly sealed the borders.”
Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh warned Pakistan of a “befitting response” before meeting Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval in Delhi to take stock of the situation.
“I want to tell our neighbour that we want peace but not at the cost of our national pride,” he said during a visit to Madhya Pradesh. “I have said this earlier and I will say it again that while we will not be the first to attack or fire, but if challenged, will give a befitting response.”
Islamabad said it was not aware of any reports that the people involved in the attack were Pakistanis while it condemned the incident and offered condolences to the victims’ families.The Congress condemned the attack and blamed it on “intelligence failure”, while the opposition party hit out at Pakistan.
“The terror attack is not only a security lapse on the border but also a failure of intelligence agencies,” party leader Anand Sharma said. “On what assurance and understanding did Prime Minister Narendra Modi issue a joint statement after their meeting in Russia?”
Soon after the attack, the home minister spoke to the Border Security Force (BSF) chief DK Pathak and told him to step up the vigil along the India-Pakistan border.
Rajnath Singh, who will make a statement on the Gurdaspur attack in parliament on Tuesday (today), also spoke to Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, NSA and the home secretary.
Jitandra Singh, a junior minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office, said he did not rule out Pakistan’s involvement. “There have also been earlier reports of Pakistan infiltration and cross-border mischief in this area,” said Singh, whose constituency in the Jammu region borders Gurdaspur.
The BSF, meanwhile, sounded an alert and stepped up the vigil along the international border.“We are on alert. We have enhanced vigil along the entire international border with Pakistan. Our senior officers are currently in the Gurdaspur Sector,” BSF IG Anil Paliwal (Punjab Frontier) said.
Some media reports suggested that the attackers behind Monday’s assault in Gurdaspur may have crossed into the Punjab from Kashmir.Monday’s attack comes weeks after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif spoke for about an hour during a summit in Russia.
The meeting raised hopes of an improvement in perennially difficult relations, but was swiftly followed by a flare-up in violence along the de facto border in Kashmir. Meanwhile, the BCCI on Monday appeared to rule out an immediate resumption of Indo-Pak cricket ties in the wake of Gurdaspur terror attack.
There were talks of resumption of bilateral cricket ties between the two nations at the end of this year but BCCI Secretary Anurag Thakur said it may not be possible under such circumstances.Asked specifically if India and Pakistan can resume cricket ties, Thakur talked tough and said it was not a possibility now.
“Earlier also, there was no such decision that the series will take place. Only the PCB has reached out to the BCCI. We were talking on those lines but when you see such attack on India time and again, the Jammu region, now the Punjab, where Indians are losing their lives, as an Indian I don’t see a possibility to that,” Thakur told a TV channel.