NEW DELHI/SRINAGAR - Gunmen in Indian-administered Kashmir raked a construction site work camp with bullets, killing seven and wounding several others, days after a new government was formed in the territory.

       The attack on Oct 20 is one of the worst in 2024 targeting civilians.

       The territory’s Chief Minister Omar Abdullah called the attack “dastardly and cowardly”, while India’s Home Minister Amit Shah vowed those responsible would face the “harshest” response.

       Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between rivals India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947, and is home to a long-running insurgency.

       Attackers targeted workers from outside the Himalayan region, who were reported to be building a road tunnel connecting Kashmir with the far northern Ladakh region, bordering China.

       India has pumped billions of dollars into multiple ambitious infrastructure projects along its disputed frontiers with arch-rival Pakistan and China.

       “At least two armed militants barged into the mess of the private construction company and fired at workers who were dining,” said a senior police officer who did not want to be named.

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       Six workers and a doctor working for the company were killed and five other people were injured in the attack, he said.

       The Resistance Front (TRF), which the Indian authorities believe is an offshoot of Pakistani Islamist militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement circulating on social media.

       Reuters was not able to independently verify the authenticity of the statement.

       Mr Abdullah, who was sworn in as the region’s Chief Minister on Oct 16 after its first local elections for a decade, said he strongly condemned the attack on “non-local labourers”.

       Soon after the attack, Mr Abdullah confirmed two people had been killed but warned there were also “a number of injured labourers, both local and non-local”.

       Security forces scoured the mountain terrain on Oct 21 trying to track down the attackers.

       At least 500,000 Indian troops are deployed in Kashmir, battling an insurgency in which tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and rebels have been killed since 1989.

       Mr Shah called the killings “a despicable act of cowardice” in a statement. “Those involved in this heinous act will not be spared, and will face the harshest response from our security forces,” the Home Minister said.

       Gunmen fired automatic weapons at the camp from forested hills around, according to Indian newspaper reports.

       India regularly accuses Pakistan of supporting and arming the rebels, a charge Islamabad denies.

       Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government cancelled Kashmir’s limited autonomy in 2019, accompanied by mass arrests and a months-long communications blackout.

       His administration says the decision has allowed it to stem the insurgency, but critics accuse it of suppressing political freedoms.

       Kashmir’s Governor, a post appointed by New Delhi, vowed retribution as he visited some of those wounded in the attack in hospital on Oct 21.

       “The brutal and savage attack against construction workers will be avenged,” Mr Manoj Sinha said in a statement.

       “I have asked the Jammu and Kashmir police (and) security forces to exact a price that will be remembered by the terrorists and their associates for time to come,” he added.

       In June, nine Indian Hindu pilgrims were killed and dozens more wounded when a gunman opened fire on a bus carrying them from a shrine in Jammu and Kashmir’s Reasi district. AFP, REUTERS