Militants shot and killed 26 tourists in a meadow above the Kashmir town of Pahalgam on 22 April 2025, in one of the region’s most lethal attacks on civilians in recent years.
The shooting unfolded in the Baisaran meadow, a vantage point above the town. The Resistance Front, a group tied to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, claimed the attack, Kashmir Times reported, then later withdrew the claim. The toll, cited through police sources, was among the highest for a civilian attack in the territory in many years.
New Delhi blamed Pakistan for the killings, which Islamabad denied. Two weeks later India struck what it described as militant bases with air power, and the two nuclear-armed states traded four days of shelling and air strikes before a sudden ceasefire.
One of the dead was Lieutenant Vinay Narwal, a 26-year-old naval officer from Haryana who had married on 16 April and was taking his honeymoon trip when he was killed. A picture of his wife seated beside his body spread quickly online.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi condemned the attack, calling it cowardly and barbaric, and Delhi ordered a security review. The gunmen singled out tourists, mostly Hindu men travelling with their families, a choice aimed squarely at the tourism trade the valley depends on. Officials said the attackers may have moved through forested ground to reach the meadow.
India and Pakistan each claim the whole of Kashmir, and each administers part of it, a dispute that has kept the territory tense for decades. In the days after the shooting, trade and travel bodies in the valley called for a shutdown in protest, and the police in Anantnag opened a round-the-clock help desk for visitors.
Sources
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- Pahalgam Tragedy: 26 Tourists Killed in Unprecedented Terror Attack
