India has said it will ensure the “complete isolation” of Pakistan after a suicide bomber killed 46 soldiers in Indian-administered Kashmir. Federal Minister Arun Jaitley said India would take “all possible diplomatic steps” to cut Pakistan off from the international community. India accuses Pakistan of failing to act against the militant group which said it carried out the attack.
This is the deadliest attack to hit the disputed region in decades. Both India and Pakistan claim all of Muslim-majority Kashmir but only control parts of it. India says that Jaish-e-Mohammad, the group behind the attack, has long had sanctuary in Pakistan and accuses its neighbour of failing to crack down on it. It has called for global sanctions against Jaish-e-Mohammad and has said it wants the leader of the group, Masood Azhar, to be listed as a terrorist by the UN security council.
Although India has tried to do this several times in the past, its attempts were repeatedly blocked by China, an ally of Pakistan. Mr Jaitley set out India’s determination to hold Pakistan to account when speaking to reporters after attending a security meeting early on Friday. He also confirmed that India would revoke Most Favoured Nation status from Pakistan, a special trading privilege granted in 1996. Pakistan said it was gravely concerned by the bombing but rejected allegations that it was in any way responsible.
But after Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a speech that those behind the attack would pay a “heavy price”, many analysts expect more action from Delhi. The bomber used a vehicle packed with explosives to ram into a convoy of India’s security forces on the heavily guarded Srinagar-Jammu highway about 20km (12 miles) from the capital, Srinagar. “A car overtook the convoy and rammed into a bus,” a senior police official told BBC Urdu’s Riyaz Masroor about the attack.
Main opposition leader Rahul Gandhi and two former Indian chief ministers of Jammu and Kashmir, all condemned the attack and expressed their condolences. There have been at least 10 suicide attacks since 1989 but this is only the second suicide attack to use a car. Prior to Thursday’s bombing, the deadliest attack on Indian security forces in Kashmir this century came in 2002, when militants killed at least 31 people at an army base in Kaluchak near Jammu, most of them civilians and relatives of soldiers.
At least 19 Indian soldiers were killed when militants stormed a base in Uri in 2016. Delhi blamed that attack on the Pakistani state, which denied any involvement. The latest attack also follows a spike in violence in Kashmir that came about after Indian forces killed a popular militant, 22-year-old Burhan Wani, in 2016. More than 500 people were killed in 2018 – including civilians, security forces and militants – the highest such toll in a decade.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars and a limited conflict since independence from Britain in 1947 – all but one were over Kashmir.
Started by cleric Masood Azhar in 2000, the group has been blamed for attacks on Indian soil in the past, including one in 2001 on the parliament in Delhi which took India and Pakistan to the brink of war. It is also said to have introduced suicide bombings in Kashmir, with the first such attack taking place in 2000. It has been designated a “terrorist” organisation by India, the UK, US and UN and has been banned in Pakistan since 2002. However Masood Azhar remains at large and is reportedly based in the Bahawalpur area in Pakistan’s Punjab province. Previous Indian efforts to have him designated a terrorist by the UN have been blocked by China. India has also demanded his extradition from Pakistan but Islamabad has refused, citing a lack of proof.
