NEW DELHI, Oct 21, 2024 (AFP) - Gunmen in Indian-administered Kashmir raked a construction site work camp with bullets, killing seven people and wounding several others, Indian media reported Monday, updating an earlier toll.

The attack on Sunday is one of the worst this year targeting civilians.
The contested territory's chief minister, Omar Abdullah, called the attack late Sunday "dastardly and cowardly", while India's interior minister Amit Shah vowed those responsible would face the "harshest" response.

Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between rivals India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947, and is home to a long-running insurgency.

Attackers targeted workers from outside the Himalayan region, who were reported to be building a road tunnel connecting Kashmir with the far northern Ladakh region, bordering China.

New Delhi has pumped billions of dollars into multiple ambitious infrastructure projects along its disputed frontiers with arch-rival Pakistan and China.

Abdullah, who was sworn in as the region's chief minister on Wednesday after its first local elections for a decade, said he strongly condemned the attack on "non-local labourers".

Soon after the attack, Abdullah confirmed two people had been killed but had warned there were also "a number of injured labourers, both local and non-local".

The Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency also reported Monday that a doctor was among the seven killed.

- 'Harshest response' -
Security forces scoured the mountain terrain Monday trying to track down the attackers.

At least 500,000 Indian troops are deployed in Kashmir, battling an insurgency with tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and rebels killed since 1989.

India's home minister Amit Shah called the killings "a despicable act of cowardice" in a statement.

"Those involved in this heinous act will not be spared, and will face the harshest response from our security forces," Shah said.
Gunmen fired automatic weapons at the camp from forested hills around, Indian newspapers reported.

India regularly accuses Pakistan of supporting and arming the rebels, a charge Islamabad denies.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government cancelled Kashmir's limited autonomy in 2019, accompanied by mass arrests and a months-long communications blackout.

His administration says the decision has allowed it to stem the insurgency, but critics have accused it of suppressing political freedoms.

Kashmir's governor, a post appointed by New Delhi, vowed retribution as he visited some of those wounded in the attack in hospital on Monday.

"The brutal and savage attack against construction workers will be avenged," Manoj Sinha said, according to a statement by his office.

"I have asked the Jammu and Kashmir police (and) security forces to exact a price that will be remembered by the terrorists and their associates for time to come," he added.

In June, nine Indian Hindu pilgrims were killed and dozens more wounded when a gunman opened fire on a bus carrying them from a shrine in Jammu and Kashmir's Reasi district.