Indian minister claims all three Pahalgam attackers killed

Indian security forces have killed three gunmen who were involved in an attack on Hindu tourists in Indian-occupied Kashmir, home minister Amit Shah said on Tuesday.

The heavily-armed men were killed in a military operation on Monday, more than three months after 26 people were gunned down in a popular resort town of Pahalgam on April 22.

"I want to tell the parliament (that) those who attacked in Baisaran were three terrorists and all three have been killed in Operation Mahadev on July 28," he said.

Shah identified two of the three killed as members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a UN-designated terrorist group based in Pakistan. He named Suleiman as the mastermind, and the two others' names as Afghan and Jibran.

"Indian security agencies have detailed evidence of their involvement in the attack," he said in a speech in the lower house of parliament.

“We were not convinced by that alone. We had already carried out forensic tests of the bullet shells found at the attack spot. We took the guns seized from the terrorists killed in Operation Mahadev to the lab in Chandigarh overnight, where the ammunition matched. That confirmed their identities even further, and we were convinced,” he told Lok Sabha.

Monday's operation took place in the mountains of Dachigam, around 30 kilometres from the disputed region's main city of Srinagar, the army said in a statement.

The attack in April saw gunmen burst out of forests near Pahalgam and rake crowds of visitors with automatic weapons. All those killed were listed as residents of India except one man from Nepal.

India accused Pakistan of backing the attackers, a charge Islamabad denied, sparking an intense four-day conflict between the nuclear-armed rivals in May that killed more than 70 people on both sides. Pakistan also shot down six Indian warplanes during the clashes.