Pahalgam: At least 26 people, mostly tourists, were killed and many others injured in a terrorist attack in South Kashmir’s Pahalgam hill station on Tuesday, April 22. The attack was carried out on a day when the United States Vice President JD Vance was in India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on a state visit to Saudi Arabia.
The Resistance Front (TRF), an offshoot of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, is believed to be behind Tuesday’s attack, one of the deadliest in Kashmir’s recent past.
The last big terror strike in Jammu and Kashmir was on June 9, 2024, the day of the swearing-in ceremony of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the third term held in the forecourt of Rashtrapati Bhavan. Unidentified terrorists fired upon a bus ferrying pilgrims, resulting in the death of at least 10 people and injuries to 33 others in the Reasi district of the Jammu region in the attack.
In another attack, terrorists struck at a construction site in Jammu and Kashmir’s Ganderbal district killing a local doctor and six migrant workers in October 2024. TRF, the banned outfit, claimed the responsibility for the Ganderbal attack too.
Besides attacks on civilians, security personnel, too, have been targeted in the violence.
The Pahalgam attack is biggest after Pulwama attack of 2019 in terms of casualties. At least 40 Indian Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel were killed on 14 February 2019, when a convoy of vehicles carrying Indian security personnel on the Jammu–a vehicle-borne suicide bomber at Lethapora attacked the Srinagar National Highway in the Pulwama district of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Here is a timeline of major terror attacks in Kashmir since 2000:
March 21, 2000: Militants targeted the minority Sikh community in Chattisinghpora village in Anantnag district on the night of March 21, killing 36 people.
August 2000: Thirty-two people, including two dozen Amarnath pilgrims, were killed in a terror attack at the Nunwan base camp.
July 2001 :Amarnath yatris were again targeted, this time at the Sheshnag base camp in Anantnag, killing 13.
October 1, 2001: Jammu & Kashmir State Legislature Complex in Srinagar was struck by a suicide (fidayeen) terrorist attack, killing 36 people.
2002: Terror struck at Chandanwari base camp, and 11 Amarnath yatris were killed.
November 23, 2002: Nineteen people, including nine security force personnel, three women and two children, lost their lives in an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) blast at Lower Munda in South Kashmir on the Jammu-Srinagar national highway.
March 23, 2003: Terrorists massacred at least 24 Kashmiri Pandits, including 11 women and two children, at Nandimarg village in Pulwama district.
June 13, 2005: Thirteen civilians, including two school children, and three CRPF officers were killed, and over 100 people sustained injuries when an explosives-laden car blew up at a crowded marketplace in front of a government school in Pulwama.
June 12, 2006: Nine Nepali and Bihari labourers were killed in Kulgam.
July 10, 2017: Attack on Amarnath Yatra bus in Kulgam, 8 killed.
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