India vowed yesterday to fight "terrorism" but avoided announcing any specific details on how it planned to respond to an attack on an army camp it blamed on Pakistan-based Kashmiri separatists.
"The government will certainly do its duty," Home (interior) Minister Lal Krishna Advani said, without giving further details of India's likely response to Tuesday's raid on the army camp in which 34 people, including the three attackers, died.
Parliament also unanimously passed a resolution to do whatever it takes to stop militant attacks and called on world leaders to take note "of the continuing acts of terrorism, encouraged by Pakistan."
Pakistan denied any involvement in Tuesday's attack.
"The house resolves to fight such senseless acts of terrorism against humanity as a whole in a united and determined manner and declares this nation's commitment to seeing an end to this menace," it said.
Four Indian civilians and two guards were injured yesterday in unusually heavy border fighting between Indian and Pakistani troops, an Indian defence official said.
"The firing, which was repelled, has died down.
Four civilians and two border guards were injured," the defence official in Jammu said.
The firing lasted six hours and sent villagers in the south of Indian-controlled Kashmir, where the fighting took place, fleeing to safety, police said.
A defence spokesman had earlier said the firing along the 210-kilometre international boundary was among the most serious since both countries mobilized their troops along the border in December.
Close to a million men have been mobilized on both sides of the border after an attack on India's parliament in December, blamed on Kashmiri separatists.
Local newspapers yesterday said the Indian Government appeared to be leaning towards stepping up diplomatic pressure on the United States and other Western nations to push Pakistan to live up to a pledge to come down hard on anti-Indian guerrilla groups.
(China Daily May 18, 2002)
