India's leader Modi touted all was well in Kashmir. A massacre of tourists shattered that claim

SRINAGAR, India (AP) — Hundreds of Indian tourists, families and honeymooners, drawn by the breathtaking Himalayan beauty, were enjoying a picture-perfect meadow in Kashmir. They didn’t know gunmen in army fatigues were lurking in the woods.

When the attackers got their chance, they shot mostly Indian Hindu men, many of them at close-range, leaving behind bodies strewn across the Baisaran meadow and survivors screaming for help.

The gunmen quickly vanished into thick forests. By the time Indian authorities arrived, 26 people were dead and 17 others were wounded.

India has described the April 22 massacre as a terror attack and blamed Pakistan for backing it, an accusation denied by Islamabad. India swiftly announced diplomatic actions against its archrival Pakistan, which responded with its own tit-for-tat measures.

The assailants are still on the run, as calls in India for military action against Pakistan are growing.

World leaders have been scrambling to de-escalate the tensions between two nuclear-armed neighbors, which have historically relied on third countries for conflict management.

But the massacre has also touched a raw nerve.

Early on Wednesday, India fired missiles that struck at least three locations inside Pakistani-controlled territory, according to Pakistani security officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. India said it was striking infrastructure used by militants.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration has governed Kashmir with an iron fist in recent years, claiming militancy in the region was in check and a tourism influx was a sign of normalcy returning.

Those claims now lie shattered.

Security experts and former intelligence and senior military officers who have served in the region say Modi’s government — riding on a nationalistic fervor over Kashmir to please its supporters — missed warning signs.

The government acknowledged that in a rare admission.

Two days after the attack, Kiren Rijiju, India’s parliamentary affairs minister, said that a crucial all-party meeting discussed “where the lapses occurred.”

“We totally missed ... the intentions of our hostile neighbor,” said Avinash Mohananey, a former Indian intelligence officer who has operated in Kashmir and Pakistan.

The meadow, near the resort town of Pahalgam, can be reached by trekking or pony rides, and visitors cross at least three security camps and a police station to reach there. According to Indian media, there was no security presence for more than 1,000 tourists that day.

Pahalgam serves as a base for an annual Hindu pilgrimage that draws hundreds of thousands of people from across India. The area is ringed by thick woods that connect with forest ranges in the Jammu area, where Indian troops have faced attacks by rebels in recent years after fighting ebbed in the Kashmir Valley, the heart of an anti-India rebellion.

The massacre brought Modi’s administration almost back to where it started when a suicide car bombing in the region in 2019 prompted his government to strip Kashmir of its semi-autonomy and bring it under direct federal rule. Tensions have simmered ever since, but the region has also drawn millions of visitors amid a strange calm enforced by an intensified security crackdown.

“We probably started buying our own narrative that things were normal in Kashmir,” Mohananey said.

In the past, insurgents have carried out brazen attacks and targeted Hindu pilgrims, Indian Hindu as well as Muslim immigrant workers, and local Hindus and Sikhs. However, this time a large number of tourists were attacked, making it one of the worst massacres involving civilians in recent years.

The attack outraged people in Kashmir and India, where it led to calls of swift action against Pakistan.

Indian television news channels amplified these demands and panelists argued that India should invade Pakistan. Modi and his senior ministers vowed to hunt down the attackers and their backers.

Experts say much of the public pressure on the Indian government to act militarily against Pakistan falls within the pattern of long, simmering animosity between both countries.

“All the talk of military options against Pakistan mainly happens in echo chambers and feeds a nationalist narrative,” in India, New Delhi-based counterterrorism expert Ajai Sahni said.

“It doesn’t matter what will be done. We will be told it was done and was a success,” he said. “And it will be celebrated nonetheless.”

Experts also say that the Modi government’s optimism was also largely misplaced and that its continuous boasting of rising tourism in the region was a fragile barometer of normalcy. Last year, Omar Abdullah, Kashmir’s top elected official, cautioned against such optimism.

“By this attack, Pakistan wants to convey that there is no normalcy in Kashmir and that tourism is no indicator for it. They want to internationalize the issue,” said D.S. Hooda, former military commander for northern India between 2014 to 2016.

Hooda said the “choice of targets and the manner in which the attack was carried out indicates that it was well-planned.”

“If there would have been a good security cover, maybe this incident would not have happened,” he said.

Indian security experts believe the attack could be a retaliation for a passenger train hijacking in Pakistan in March by Baloch insurgents. Islamabad accused New Delhi of orchestrating the attack in which 25 people were killed. India denies it.

Mohananey said that Indian authorities should have taken the accusations seriously and beefed-up security in Kashmir, while arguing there was a striking similarity in both attacks since only men were targeted.

“It was unusual that women and children were spared" in both cases, Mohananey said.

Two senior police officers, who have years of counterinsurgency experience in Kashmir, said after the train attack in Pakistan that they were anticipating some kind of reaction in the region by militants.

The officers, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that security officials perceived the threat of an imminent attack, and Modi’s inauguration of a strategic rail line in the region was canceled. A large-scale attack on tourists, however, wasn't anticipated, because there was no such precedence, the officers said.

Hooda, who commanded what New Delhi called “surgical strikes” against militants in the Pakistan-controlled part of Kashmir in 2016, said that the attack has deepened thinking that it was time to tackle the Pakistani state, not just militants.

Such calculus could be a marked shift. In 2016 and 2019, India said that its army struck militant infrastructure inside Pakistan after two major militant attacks against its soldiers.

“After this attack,” Hooda said, India wants to stop Pakistan "from using terrorism as an instrument of state policy.”

“We need to tighten our security and plug lapses, but the fountainhead of terrorism needs to be tackled,” Hooda said. “The fountainhead is Pakistan.”

Saaliq and Roy reported from New Delhi.

Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh, second left, talks to three Indian defense chiefs, Army General Upendra Dwivedi, third right, Naval Admiral Dinesh K Tripathi, second right, and Air Force Air Chief Marshal A P Singh, right, as Indian Chief of Defense Staff General Anil Chauhan, left, watches as they wait for the arrival of Japan's Defense Minister Gen Nakatani in New Delhi, India, Monday, May 5, 2025.(AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

FILE - A Kashmiri boatman stands on his illuminated boat during a laser show and and live concert organized to boost winter tourism in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Dec. 7, 2022. (AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan, File)

FILE - Tourists wait for their turn to use a ski-lift to transport them up a slope in Gulmarg, northwest of Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Jan. 10, 2021. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin, File)

FILE - An Indian paramilitary soldier walks past graffiti on a wall in Srinagar, Indian-controlled Kashmir, Aug. 29, 2016. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin, File)

FILE - Indian security officers inspect the site where militants indiscriminately opened fired on tourists on Tuesday, in Pahalgam, Indian controlled Kashmir, Wednesday, April 23, 2025. (AP Photo, File)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump said Iran wants to negotiate with Washington after his threat to strike the Islamic Republic over its bloody crackdown on protesters, a move coming as activists said Monday the death toll in the nationwide demonstrations rose to at least 544.

Iran had no immediate reaction to the news, which came after the foreign minister of Oman — long an interlocutor between Washington and Tehran — traveled to Iran this weekend. It also remains unclear just what Iran could promise, particularly as Trump has set strict demands over its nuclear program and its ballistic missile arsenal, which Tehran insists is crucial for its national defense.

Meanwhile Monday, Iran called for pro-government demonstrators to head to the streets in support of the theocracy, a show of force after days of protests directly challenging the rule of 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iranian state television aired chants from the crowd, who shouted “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!”

Trump and his national security team have been weighing a range of potential responses against Iran including cyberattacks and direct strikes by the U.S. or Israel, according to two people familiar with internal White House discussions who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

“The military is looking at it, and we’re looking at some very strong options,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday night. Asked about Iran’s threats of retaliation, he said: “If they do that, we will hit them at levels that they’ve never been hit before.”

Trump said that his administration was in talks to set up a meeting with Tehran, but cautioned that he may have to act first as reports of the death toll in Iran mount and the government continues to arrest protesters.

“I think they’re tired of being beat up by the United States,” Trump said. “Iran wants to negotiate.”

He added: “The meeting is being set up, but we may have to act because of what’s happening before the meeting. But a meeting is being set up. Iran called, they want to negotiate.”

Iran through country's parliamentary speaker warned Sunday that the U.S. military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if America uses force to protect demonstrators.

More than 10,600 people also have been detained over the two weeks of protests, said the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been accurate in previous unrest in recent years and gave the death toll. It relies on supporters in Iran crosschecking information. It said 496 of the dead were protesters and 48 were with security forces.

With the internet down in Iran and phone lines cut off, gauging the demonstrations from abroad has grown more difficult. The Associated Press has been unable to independently assess the toll. Iran’s government has not offered overall casualty figures.

Those abroad fear the information blackout is emboldening hard-liners within Iran’s security services to launch a bloody crackdown. Protesters flooded the streets in the country’s capital and its second-largest city on Saturday night into Sunday morning. Online videos purported to show more demonstrations Sunday night into Monday, with a Tehran official acknowledging them in state media.

In Tehran, a witness told the AP that the streets of the capital empty at the sunset call to prayers each night. By the Isha, or nighttime prayer, the streets are deserted.

Part of that stems from the fear of getting caught in the crackdown. Police sent the public a text message that warned: “Given the presence of terrorist groups and armed individuals in some gatherings last night and their plans to cause death, and the firm decision to not tolerate any appeasement and to deal decisively with the rioters, families are strongly advised to take care of their youth and teenagers.”

Another text, which claimed to come from the intelligence arm of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, also directly warned people not to take part in demonstrations.

“Dear parents, in view of the enemy’s plan to increase the level of naked violence and the decision to kill people, ... refrain from being on the streets and gathering in places involved in violence, and inform your children about the consequences of cooperating with terrorist mercenaries, which is an example of treason against the country,” the text warned.

The witness spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity due to the ongoing crackdown.

The demonstrations began Dec. 28 over the collapse of the Iranian rial currency, which trades at over 1.4 million to $1, as the country’s economy is squeezed by international sanctions in part levied over its nuclear program. The protests intensified and grew into calls directly challenging Iran’s theocracy.

Nikhinson reported from aboard Air Force One.

In this frame grab from video obtained by the AP outside Iran, a masked demonstrator holds a picture of Iran's Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi during a protest in Tehran, Iran, Friday, January. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP)

In this frame grab from footage circulating on social media from Iran shows protesters taking to the streets despite an intensifying crackdown as the Islamic Republic remains cut off from the rest of the world in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026.(UGC via AP)

In this frame grab from footage circulating on social media from Iran showed protesters once again taking to the streets of Tehran despite an intensifying crackdown as the Islamic Republic remains cut off from the rest of the world in Tehran, Iran, Saturday Jan. 10, 2026. (UGC via AP)