JAMMU, July 23: India vowed on Wednesday that an attack at an army camp in Kashmir would not be allowed to derail fragile peace moves with Pakistan but said guerrillas were still infiltrating from the neighbouring country.

Defence Minister George Fernandes said militants, such as those who raided the garrison, were still sneaking into Indian Kashmir from Pakistan.

“The militants are still coming from Pakistan and it is a reality,” he said in reply to queries whether he was convinced by Islamabad’s pledges to control the movement of militants into India.

Fernandes visited the Tanda garrison, near the town of Akhnoor in southern Kashmir, to probe a security breach which allowed three militants Tuesday to kill eight soldiers, including a brigadier, and to injure three generals.

He added, however, the nascent peace process between the two South Asian rivals will not be derailed by such attacks.

“We will not allow fidayeen to derail the peace process. There are some who want to derail the peace process but we will not allow them the upper hand,” he said in the Kashmiri winter capital Jammu after visiting the garrison.

“We should also not come to the conclusion of war whenever such incidents take place.”

He said blaming the military for allowing the attack to take place was “ridiculous and incorrect”.

“Our men killed three attackers who had come to kill and get killed.

A previously unknown group called the Al Shuhda Brigade claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attack and said it was to protest the visit to India of JUI leader Fazlur Rehman.

“These attackers wanted to convey to leaders like Fazlur Rehman that his peace mission may not succeed,” said Fernandes.

“They came from Pakistan. And we suspect the hand of Lashkar-e-Taiba behind the suicide attack even if claims are being made by hitherto unknown rebel groups,” Fernandes said.

The minister was meeting with army officers to assess whether there had been security lapses at the camp.

“I do not see it as a security lapse,” he told reporters, though those were the words in headlines of most major Indian papers on Wednesday.

Several political parties called a general strike in Jammu to protest the surge of violence, paralysing the city Wednesday.

Indian newspapers criticized the presence of so many senior officers at one time in a region where militants were active, plus the fact that they were at the camp before it had been completely secured.

“Army has learnt little from the past,” The Times of India said in a front-page headline.

“We were given a report that the area had been cleared, after which the army commander and I, along with other senior officers, moved around the unit to assess the situation on the ground,” Lt-Gen. T.P.S. Brar told a local TV channel on Wednesday.

“While we were moving near the foliage, we suddenly found two grenades being hurled at us. And within seconds, the fidayeen ran out of the undergrowth,” Brar said.

“He was immediately shot... While he was shot, the explosive devices strapped on him went off,” he said. —Agencies