Gunmen who carried out India’s Punjab attack were Muslim

Punjab chief minister Prakash Singh Badal, who runs the state government coalition with ruling national party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), blamed the federal government, saying terrorism and militancy are “national” problems. Senior police officers had also visited his home late last evening.

Five live bombs, reportedly planted by the militants, were also recovered from nearby rail tracks, forcing all train services to the region to be cancelled.

Baljit was recruited in Punjab Police in 1986 on compassionate grounds after his father Achar Singh, an assistant sub-inspector-rank police official, was killed in a suspected terrorist attack in Moga in 1984. He said he was hopeful that the situation will be soon brought under control.

India alleges Lashkar-e-Taiba carried out the November 2008 attacks targeting a railway station and luxury hotels in Mumbai that killed 166 people.

Sources in intelligence agencies and Punjab Police said here on Tuesday that the track of the Global Positioning System sets revealed that the terrorists had moved from Shakargarh area in Pakistan along the India-Pakistan border on Sunday and entered India.

Police said out of those brought to civil hospital at Gurdaspur, seven seriously injured were referred to Amritsar.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had a brief meeting in Russian Federation two weeks ago on the fringe of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit and they agreed to have a bilateral meeting in 2016 at the South Asian Asscoiation for Regional Cooperation summit.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh said he had ordered increased security on the border with Pakistan, although the identity of the attackers was not immediately clear. As of now, a forensic team is in Gurdaspur to investigate in the attack.

But it noted that fortunately “only some Indian officials began to blame Pakistan and the ISI” for the attack.

Gurdaspur/New Delhi, The terrorists who created havoc here yesterday had crossed over from Pakistan on July 26-27 night using Ravi river and they had more targets, the probe has found even as images surfaced today showing three heavily-armed men in Army fatigues walking on a road.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry condemned the attack.

Pakistan, which has fought three wars with India since both nations gained independence in 1947, has denied any involvement in insurgencies in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir.