SRINAGAR: At least 26 people were killed and 17 others injured when gunmen opened fire on a group of tourists in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), police reported on Wednesday.
The attack, which occurred in Pahalgam on Tuesday — a popular summer tourist destination located about 90 kilometers from Srinagar — is the deadliest assault on civilians in India since the 2008 Mumbai attacks. The victims included 25 Indian nationals and one Nepali citizen. The gunmen targeted tourists in an off-road meadow, police said.
Responsibility for the attack was claimed by a little-known militant group calling itself the “Kashmir Resistance.” In a social media statement, the group denounced the settlement of over 85,000 “outsiders” in the region, accusing the Indian government of engineering a demographic transformation.
The massacre came just a day after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held talks with US Vice President JD Vance in New Delhi. In response to the tragedy, PM Modi cut short his official visit to Saudi Arabia and returned to the capital on Wednesday morning. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman also curtailed her overseas trip to the US and Peru, citing the need to be “with our people in this difficult and tragic time,” according to her ministry.
In the wake of the killings, over a dozen local organisations announced a shutdown across the federally administered territory to protest the violence. Many schools also closed in solidarity.
Airlines began operating additional flights from Srinagar as panicked tourists sought to leave the region, officials confirmed.
Tourist-targeted attacks in IIOJK are rare, though tensions in the area have remained high. The last such deadly incident took place in June 2024, when a bus carrying Hindu pilgrims was attacked, resulting in nine deaths and 33 injuries after it plunged into a gorge.
India’s decision in 2019 to revoke Kashmir’s special constitutional status has fueled further unrest. The move split the region into two federally administered territories — Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh — and enabled outsiders to obtain domicile rights, including land and employment opportunities. This policy shift has further strained ties with Pakistan and deepened the longstanding dispute over the region.
