PM presides over high-level meeting to discuss Pathankot op

“The operation will continue until the airbase is cleared of intruders”, Air Officer Commander told reporters in Pathankot, confirming that seven security personnel had been killed in the initial attack.

Indian security forces battled into Sunday evening to secure an air base near the border with Pakistan, a day after a militant attack that has killed seven military personnel and wounded another 20.

The operation against militants holed up at Pathankot air base entered the third day on Monday after explosions and firing continued intermittently overnight.

While the NDTV news station said the base housed jet fighters and attack helicopters, police said the gunmen didn’t get near that part of the airport in the first raid on Saturday. A guard chased after one of the attackers and killed him in the struggle, only to be shot dead by a gunman’s bullet. Among those attended were T C A Raghavan, who retired as India’s high commissioner to Pakistan last month, along with his predecessors Shyam Saran, Satindra Lambah, S.S. Menon, Satyadutt Pal, and Sharad Sabharwal.

The assault – a rare targeting of an Indian military installation outside disputed Kashmir – threatens to undermine improving relations with Pakistan.

In New Delhi, two trains were delayed early on Sunday after officials received information about a possible bomb threat on a train running between the capital and Lucknow to the southeast, railways spokesman Neeraj Sharma said.

A top security official, who asked not to be named, alleged that the gunmen were believed to be from the Jaish-i-Mohammad group, describing them as suicide attackers who breached security at the base in the northern state of Punjab while wearing army uniforms. However on Sunday afternoon, two more terrorists emerged from hiding, and resumed their attacks on the base. Defence sources said Jagdish shot dead the militant.

The holed up militants were discovered in the forested area on the backside of the air base from where they are reported to have entered.

The attack came a week after Modi met with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan during an unannounced stopover in Lahore on his way back from Kabul.

Pakistan denies these allegations, claiming it provides Kashmiri separatists only moral and political support for their cause of an independent Muslim homeland.

Even as the stage was being set for the foreign secretary-level meeting between the two sides came the Pathankot attack that is being deemed as an attack on the softening of ties between New Delhi and Islamabad.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry and the US State Department have condemned the attack.

The U.S has also been pressing Pakistan for action against perpetrators of Mumbai terror attacks. In the past, when it was in opposition, Modi’s own right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party was a vocal critic of engagement with Pakistan.