India closes border with Pakistan after 26 people killed in Kashmir attack

India yesterday closed a key land border with neighboring Pakistan, cancelled a water-sharing treaty and barred its citizens from entry under a visa exemption scheme in the wake of Tuesday's attack by Islamic militants in Kashmir that killed 26 people.

- Aakash Hassan Delhi Peter Beaumont

The moves came as India's defence minister, Rajnath Singh, said those who had carried out and planned the Kashmir region's worst attack on civilians in years, including those working "behind the scenes", would be subjected to a swift response.

Announcing the downgrading of its relations with Pakistan, India's foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, told a media briefing that cross-border connections to the attack had been "brought out" at a special meeting of the security cabinet, after which it was decided to act.

Misri said India was suspending the Indus water treaty "until Pakistan credibly and irrevocably abjures its support for cross-border terrorism".

Pakistan has denied involvement in the attack and said its prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, would chair a national security committee meeting today to respond.

Indian security forces yesterday fanned out across the Himalayan region of Kashmir as the army and police launched a massive manhunt for the perpetrators of the militant attack on Tuesday that killed 26 people, mostly tourists and all men.

Amid rapidly rising tensions in the region, which has been riven by militant violence since the start of an anti-Indian insurgency in 1989, survivors said the militants asked men they had rounded up to recite Islamic verses before executing those who could not do so.

Asavari Jagdale, who lives in the western Indian state of Maharashtra and lost her father and uncle in the attack, told local media that she and her family had hid inside a nearby tent along with other tourists when the shooting started.