Indian police overcame a group of heavily armed men dressed in military fatigues on Monday after a 12-hour gun battle that ended in a small-town police station near the border with Pakistan, and at least nine people were killed. Police in the frontier state of Punjab killed three unidentified assailants who had pulled up at the police complex in a stolen car, automatic weapons blazing, at about 5 a.m. (7.30 p.m. ET Sunday). Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his top ministers have not made detailed statements on the attack, which is certain to raise tensions with Pakistan if it is proven to have originated across the border. The gunmen shot dead a barber and tried to hijack a bus before rushing the police station, witnesses said. Shoe shop owner Amit Sharma, 43, was woken by the sound of gunfire at dawn. "I thought someone was setting off firecrackers," Sharma told Reuters. Instead, he saw three men with assault rifles "spraying bullets everywhere." Throughout the day, regular bouts of small arms fire echoed across the town of Dinanagar and the paddy fields surrounding it, some 15 km (10 miles) from the international border, Reuters witnesses said. Three policemen and three civilians were killed, according to the home ministry. The siege focused on an abandoned building where the attackers holed up. It dragged on because security forces had wanted to capture at least one of the militants alive, a senior government source said. Police sources added that the attackers entered India from Pakistan two days ago a short distance to the north in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, where separatist guerrillas are seeking independence from India. Jitendra Singh, a junior minister in Modi's office, said he did not rule out Pakistan's involvement. "There have also been earlier reports of Pakistan infiltration and cross-border mischief in this area," said Singh, whose constituency in the Jammu region borders Gurdaspur. Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Salahuddin, who is based in Pakistan, denied his men were involved in the attack.
