Terrorists opened fire at Pahalgam in India’s Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) on April 22, killing at least 26 tourists, including two foreign nationals and two locals, and injuring several others. The attack is being described as the deadliest terrorist attack in the Kashmir valley since the February 2019 suicide bombing by Jaish-e-Mohammed militants at Pulwama, which killed 40 paramilitary personnel.
“This attack is much larger than anything we’ve seen directed at civilians in recent years,” J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said.
“Those behind this heinous act will be brought to justice…they will not be spared!” India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on X.
A senior commander of the Indian Army’s Northern Command told The Diplomat that the “terrorists who slaughtered unarmed civilians at Pahalgam were either Pakistani nationals or backed by Pakistan.” India should not “shrink away from air strikes or even sending Special Forces across the border into Pakistan,” he said, stressing that “a forceful response” was necessary to show that “terrorism against the Indian people will not go unanswered.”
Eyewitnesses said that around six men clad in military fatigues emerged from the surrounding forests and began firing automatic weapons. They asked people for their names and to recite Islamic verses before shooting them dead at close range.
The Resistance Front (TRF), an affiliate of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, has claimed responsibility for the attack. Over 85,000 “outsiders” — read non-Kashmiri Indians — have been settled in Kashmir over the last couple of years, leading to “demographic change,” the TRF said in a message on social media. In a bid to justify its attack on tourists, it said that non-locals “arrive posing as tourists, obtain domiciles and then begin to act as if they own the land.”
“Consequently, violence will be directed against those attempting to settle illegally” in J&K, the TRF said.
Tuesday’s attack took place in the upper meadows of Pahalgam’s Baisaran Valley in J&K’s Anantnag district. Known for its thick forests and verdant meadows, Pahalgam draws thousands of tourists annually from other parts of India and abroad.
Pahalgam is also the starting point of a route for the Amarnath Yatra, a major Hindu pilgrimage. This yatra, which takes place every year between July and August, draws hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from across India. It has been repeatedly targeted by terrorists since the eruption of the militancy in J&K in 1989-90.
The timing of Tuesday’s attack at Pahalgam is important; registration for participation in the yatra, which begins in just ten weeks, started on April 14.
Several major attacks on tourists and pilgrims visiting Kashmir have happened in recent years. In July 2017, a bus ferrying Amarnath pilgrims was ambushed near Anantnag. Eight were killed and 18 injured. In May 2024, two tourists from Jaipur were injured in a targeted firing incident inside a private resort in Pahalgam. In June 2024, militants shot at a bus carrying pilgrims from the Shiv Khori cave shrine in Reasi district. The driver lost control and the bus fell into a deep gorge. Nine people died, including women and children, and 33 others were injured.
Only last week, Kashmiri media reported that “with 525,272 tourists visiting the valley in just the first three months and one week of 2025,” the local economy had received a boost, “bringing smiles to people who depend on tourism for their livelihood,” Photographs of tourists posing in Srinagar’s tulip gardens and houseboats, skiing in Gulmarg, and going horseback riding in Pahalgam were going viral on social media.
“With such a strong start, 2025 looks to be a record-breaking year for Kashmir tourism,” the Kashmir Life website reported jubilantly.
Tuesday’s terrorist attack at Pahalgam is likely to shatter that optimism. Tourists are already leaving J&K and cancellations of hotel and other bookings are pouring in.
“Six of my twelve foreign guests left tonight. Next week’s bookings are cancelled. We were hoping for recovery this season, but this is worse than 2016,” Sajad Ahmad Bhat, who owns Hotel Alpine Meadows, told local media. Following the killing of popular Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani by Indian security forces in 2016, Kashmir was convulsed in mass protests, which paralyzed the economy.
J&K’s tourism-dependent economy has suffered heavily due to the anti-India insurgency, the Indian crackdown following the revocation of J&K’s autonomy in August 2019, and the COVID-19 lockdowns.
Promoting tourism has been an important strategy of the Narendra Modi government to kickstart the J&K economy. The government is also keen to project growing tourist arrivals as evidence of the success of its muscular Kashmir policy and strategy. It promoted J&K as a tourist-friendly destination.
An important part of this strategy was to encourage the hosting of major events in Kashmir. In May 2023, Srinagar hosted a G-20 tourism working group meeting, which saw at least 60 foreign delegates participating, albeit under a multitiered security arrangement. Shooting of films in J&K was encouraged; picturesque Pahalgam was among the popular locales.
This strategy was aimed at convincing India and the world that the situation in J&K was normalizing and that the Modi government’s decision to fully integrate J&K was correct.
Tuesday’s bloodbath at Pahalgam will deal a deadly setback to Delhi’s strategy. Now the question is how India will respond.
In September 2016, four militants of the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) entered the Indian Army’s brigade headquarters at Uri near the Line of Control (LoC) and killed 19 soldiers. India responded with “surgical strikes” across the LoC.
Following the Pulwama attack in February 2019, India escalated its response. The Indian Air Force crossed the border and carried out “retaliatory airstrikes” on targets in Balakot, deep inside Pakistani territory.
Former J&K Police Chief Shesh Paul Vaid has now described the Pahalgam attack as “Pulwama 2.0 moment.” Drawing parallels between the attack that targeted civilians and Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, Vaid said: “Our response should be appropriate, something like how Israel responded.”
The coming days will see Indian hawks and ultra-nationalists calling for revenge against Pakistan.
In recent months, India and Pakistan have engaged repeatedly in a heated exchange of words over Kashmir. In a speech on Kashmir Solidarity Day, which Pakistan commemorates annually on February 5, Pakistan’s Army Chief General Asim Munir said: “Three wars have been fought for Kashmir, and if ten more need to be fought, we will fight, Allah willing,” adding, “Kashmir will become Pakistan.”
Referencing Kashmir as Pakistan’s “jugular vein” at the inaugural of the Overseas Pakistanis Conference in Islamabad on April 13, Munir invoked the two-nation theory to underscore that Hindus and Muslims are different. “Our forefathers thought that we were different from the Hindus in every aspect of life. Our religions, our customs, traditions, thoughts, and ambitions are different. That was the foundation of the two-nation theory.” Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s two-nation theory led to the blood partition of India and the creation of Pakistan.
A week after Munir’s bellicose words, the attack in Pahalgam happened, providing substance to arguments of Indian hawks and Hindu nationalists that the mass killings at Pahalgam had Pakistan’s blessing.
Meanwhile, Pakistan has distanced itself from the attack. In its first official reaction, Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said that Pakistan “had nothing to do with it.” “We do not support terrorism in any form,” he claimed, and went on to describe terrorism in India as “homegrown.”
“We have absolutely nothing to do with it. We reject terrorism in all its forms and everywhere,” Asif told a Pakistan TV channel on the Pahalgam attack.
According to reports in the Indian media, Pakistan, in anticipation of a Balakot-like response from India, is beefing up its defenses.
Social media is rife with Hindu nationalist posts giving the attacks a communal color and blaming Kashmiri Muslims for the plight of the tourists.
They would do well to take note that those who ran to help the victims and their kin were largely local Kashmiri Muslims — shawl sellers and craftsmen selling their wares. Vehicles do not ply to the Baisaran valley. So the locals ferried the injured and the dead on ponies or lifted them on their backs to get them to hospitals.
Without their help, the death toll would have been higher.