War Risk Between India & Pakistan Rises as New Delhi Plans Response to Attack

26/05/2001| IslamWeb

NEW DELHI (Islamweb & News Agencies) - India was preparing its response on Friday to an unprecedented guerrilla attack on its parliament, having vowed to ``liquidate the terrorists and their sponsors, whoever they are, wherever they are.''
Though no-one claimed responsibility, analysts' were quick mention Muslim Resistance groups in Kashmir -- and the risks if India were to strike at their suspected bases in territory controlled by Pakistan. Both neighbors have tested nuclear weapons and have fought two of three previous wars over mountainous Kashmir.
Five gunmen, including a suicide bomber, drove into New Delhi's grand parliament complex on Thursday and killed seven people before security forces gunned them all down. There were clear parallels with a suicide attack on the local assembly of Jammu and Kashmir state two months ago, in which 38 people died.
At that time India, under heavy pressure from Western powers to show restraint, held back from striking at the Pakistan-based Islamic Resistance group whom it blames for a 12-year revolt against Delhi's rule in Kashmir.
But the widely held view of analysts and diplomats then was that, come the next big attack, India would have to strike back.
Now that attack has come, against the seat of power of the world's biggest democracy, an imposing parliament complex built more than 70 years ago under India's British imperial rulers.
Witnesses said the attackers, exploiting Indian respect for authority, simply drove into the compound in a 1950s-style, white Ambassador car like thousands used by Indian officials, its red roof light flashing and bearing a security sticker.
They were killed by guards before they could make it inside, where most of India's government and lawmakers were gathered.
``I can only imagine how horrifying it would have been if the suicide squad...had succeeded in its objective,'' Home (interior) Minister L.K. Advani told reporters.
As it was, six guards and a gardener were killed in the gunbattle and some 16 others injured.