Condemning the “cowardly” terror attack on an Army camp in Uri, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today assured the nation that those behind the “despicable” strike won’t go unpunished.

He saluted the soldiers who were martyred in the attack and said their service to the nation will always be remembered.

“We strongly condemn the cowardly terror attack in Uri. I assure the nation that those behind this despicable attack will not go unpunished,” Modi tweeted on the incident in which 17 soldiers were killed and 30 injured.

He said he has spoken to Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on the situation in the wake of the terror attack.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh chaired a crisis meeting in New Delhi and cancelled trips to Russia and the United States. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar will travel to Uri to oversee the operation to secure the area and investigate the attack.

“It is clearly a case of cross-border terror attack. We don’t know which militant group is involved,” a senior Home Ministry official told Reuters.

Heavily armed terrorists stormed a battalion headquarters of the Army in North Kashmir’s Uri town around 5 am today. Four terrorists have been killed and combing operations are on.

The Defence Ministry put the number of wounded at 35. There has been no claim of responsibility.

The military death toll was the worst in Indian-ruled Kashmir since a raid in December 2014, also near Uri which is to the west of the region’s main city of Srinagar, in which eight soldiers and three police were killed.

Before this attack, 102 people had been killed in militant attacks in India’s part of the Himalayan region this year. Among them were 30 security personnel, 71 militants and one civilian, according to a tally by the New Delhi-based South Asia Terrorism Portal.

(With inputs from PTI and Reuters)

(Feature image source: Kashmir)