(23 Apr 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Hapatnar, Indian Controlled Kashmir – 23 April 2025
1. Ambulance arriving carrying the body of civilian killed in attack
2. Coffin being taken out of the ambulance
3. Villagers looking at the funeral procession
4. Body being shown to villagers
5. Various of relatives weeping
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Pahalgam, Indian Controlled Kashmir – 23 April 2025
6. Various of soldiers on street
STORYLINE:
A funeral was held Wednesday for a local resident in Indian-controlled Kashmir after an attack Tuesday killed at least 26 people, most of them tourists, as Indian forces launched a manhunt for the perpetrators of one of the deadliest attacks in the restive Himalayan region.
As investigators began probing the attack, many shops and businesses in Kashmir closed to protest the killings following a call from the region’s religious and political parties.
Tens of thousands of armed police and soldiers fanned out across the region and erected additional checkpoints. They searched cars and in some areas summoned former militants to police stations for questioning, reports said.
Police called the incident a “terror attack” and blamed militants fighting against Indian rule.
“Kashmir Resistance,” a previously unknown militant group, claimed responsibility for the attack in two messages on social media. The group said authorities had settled over 85,000 “outsiders” in the region and claimed that those targeted on Tuesday were not “ordinary tourists” but “were linked to and affiliated with Indian security agencies.”
The group’s messages could not be independently verified.
Earlier this month, the local government told its legislature that 83,742 non-local Indians were granted domicile rights in Kashmir in the last two years.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi cut short his two-day visit to Saudi Arabia and returned to New Delhi early Wednesday.
Officials said 24 of the people killed were Indian tourists, one was from Nepal and one was a local tourist guide. At least 17 others were injured.
Separately, soldiers killed two suspected militants in a gunfight after they tried to cross into Indian side from Pakistan-controlled Kashmir in northwestern Baramulla district along the heavily militarized Line of Control dividing the region, the Indian army said in a statement on Wednesday. There was no independent confirmation of the incident.
Kashmir has seen a spate of deadly attacks on Hindus, including immigrant workers from Indian states, since New Delhi ended the region’s semi-autonomy in 2019 and drastically curbed dissent, civil liberties and media freedoms.
New Delhi has vigorously pushed tourism and the region has drawn millions of visitors to its Himalayan foothills and exquisitely decorated houseboats. Officials have claimed that as a sign of normalcy returning, despite the presence of ubiquitous security checkpoints, armored vehicles and patrolling soldiers. Until Tuesday, tourists were not targeted.
Following the attack, panicked tourists started to leave Kashmir.
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