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Rampage by militants in northern India kills 6

An Indian army soldier takes position during a fight with militants in the town of Dinanagar on July 27.

An Indian army soldier takes position during a fight with militants in the town of Dinanagar on July 27.

(Channi Anand / Associated Press)
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Three armed militants rampaged through a town in northern India on Monday, opening fire on a restaurant, cars and a health center and killing at least six people before being gunned down by Indian forces in an hours-long shootout, officials said.

Indian officials announced that the battle was over late Monday afternoon local time, nearly 12 hours after the militants began their attack in Gurudaspur, a district in Punjab state near the Pakistani border, the Press Trust of India reported.

Indian news reports said six people, including three police officers, were killed, although other sources placed the toll as high as eight. Three gunmen were killed by security forces including Indian army commandos, officials said.

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Three civilians and three police officers were killed and several other people were wounded, Indian Home Secretary L.C. Goyal said, according to the Times of India.

“We were hit by a burst of gunfire suddenly. I was hit on the shoulder. They are firing indiscriminately every five minutes,” a Punjab police official who was injured in the attack told reporters as he was being taken to the hospital.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but suspicion in India immediately fell on militant organizations based across the border in Pakistan.

It was the first major militant attack in more than a decade in Punjab, which has been relatively peaceful despite its proximity to the volatile Indian-Pakistani border.

The mayhem began at around 5 a.m., police said, when the attackers, reportedly wearing army uniforms, fired on a roadside restaurant and killed a vendor near Dinanagar bypass road in one of the largest towns in the district.

They went on to open fire on a bus and a Maruti hatchback, wounding its driver. The militants then took off in his car toward a community health center, firing at the building, before entering the nearby Dinanagar police station.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi called an emergency meeting in New Delhi, the capital, which was placed on high alert along with several other major Indian cities.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh tweeted, “The Ministry of Home Affairs is monitoring the situation in Gurudaspur and Punjab. I am confident that the situation will be soon brought in control.”

Separately, Indian media reported that security forces recovered five live bombs from the railway route connecting the city of Amritsar and the town of Pathalkot. Gurudaspur lies along the railway route, whose services were suspended as bomb squads and a police contingent were deployed in the area.

Parth M.N. is a special correspondent.

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