India claims to have killed two of the Calcutta gunmen

Indian authorities claimed yesterday they had killed two Pakistanis involved in a drive-by shooting at the American Centre in Calcutta last week that India characterised as a terrorist attack.

The deaths occurred after police encircled a house in a mostly Muslim quarter of the city of Hazaribagh, about 400 kms north west of Calcutta, early yesterday morning.

According to a senior police officer in the city, Detective Inspector General A.K. Sinha, the two men opened fire after their house had been surrounded, then tried to steal away, but were shot dead in the ensuing gun battle.

Another senior police officer claimed that the two men had confessed to their involvement in last Monday's attack before dying.

There was no independent corroboration of the Indian claims, which seem certain to stoke tensions between India and Pakistan which are already at a dangerous pitch, with the armed forces of both countries in the highest possible state of mobilisation on both sides of the long common border.

American officials have yet to decide whether the Calcutta attack, in which five policemen died, was actually a terrorist attack or merely a violent crime.

One explanation for the incident circulating here explains it as revenge by Aftab Ansari, the Dubai-based Indian gangster who has claimed responsibility, for the killing by Indian police of one of his henchmen in custody.

Soon after last Monday's attack, India's Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani, claimed that Pakistan's military intelligence agency, ISI, was involved in it, a claim angrily rejected by the Pakistani government.

Yesterday one of Mr Advani's subordinates, Kamal Pande, head of the Home Ministry's bureaucracy, said that the killing of the two men in Hazaribgh confirmed the ISI connection. "A new trend is emerging," he said, "in terms of direct involvement of Pakistani nationals in terrorist activities in India." Until now, he said, the ISI policy was to use Indian nationals as proxies.

The two dead men were named as Mohammed Idris, alias Mohammed Zaheed, and Salim (only one name released). Police say that both were linked to Aftab Ansari, who remains their favoured suspect as master-mind of the Calcutta incident.

Meanwhile Pakistan claimed that Indian troops fired mortars, small arms and four anti-tank shells across the Line of Control, the de facto border between Indian and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. "Pakistan's army retaliated swiftly," a Pakistan army statement claimed, "causing considerable damage to enemy positions."

- INDEPENDENT