Pathankot Terror Attack: Snippets

Three days after a terrorist attack on Indian air base in Punjab, security personnel failed to clear the air force base where heavy gun battle erupted on Monday, according to Indian media reports.

Security forces were put on high alert in Pathankot in Punjab’s frontier district Gurdaspur on Friday after a senior police official said he and his associates were kidnapped by five armed men in army fatigues.

The attack on the Pathankot air force base, which started before dawn Saturday, has so far left seven Indian troops and four gunmen dead.

NSG and army commandos conducted a thorough mopping of the entire area where the terrorists, suspected to be from Pakistan, had been cornered, police said. Security has been beefed up at key cities like New Delhi and Mumbai fearing similar such attacks.

A fifth gunman has been killed in a more than two-day long siege at an air base near India’s border with Pakistan.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

One terrorist was killed on Sunday, though there is no official confirmation since the body is yet to be found.

As the two terrorists were still holed up in two-storey building at the Pathankot air base, operation entered the third day today after explosions and firing continued intermittently overnight.

The security and investigation agencies, including the National Investigation Agency (NIA), are trying to reconstruct events from the night of Dec 30-31 to the terror attack on the Indian Air Force (IAF) base around 3.30 am on Saturday.

Ties seemed to take a turn for the better after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, late last month.

Indian security personnel check people entering an airbase in Pathankot, India, Monday, Jan. 4.

Against the backdrop of these attacks it is certain that the foreign secretary-level talks scheduled in Islamabad on 14-15 January can not be held.

Singh, who was flanked by Air officer commanding, Air commodore J S Damoon and Brigadier Anupinder Singh, said “the entire operation will continue till all the personnel, assets, structure are physically combed”. Hindustan Times said that India may postpone the talks to give Pakistan time to crack down on Jaish-e-Mohammed, the militant outfit behind the attack.

Modi returned from a tour of Karnataka to chair a high-level meeting with his national security adviser and foreign policy team, the government press office said.