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Indian police foil 'terror plot'
By CNN Producer
NEW DELHI, India -- Indian police have killed two suspected terrorists who they say were planning to attack a shopping mall crowded with shoppers on the eve of a major Hindu festival. Warned that a terrorist attack might take place, a special team of police were dispatched to the upscale Ansal Plaza in downtown New Delhi, where they came upon the suspects at 8 p.m. (9:30 a.m. EST). The suspects were parking their white, late-model Suzuki car in the basement parking lot of the mall, commissioner of police for special operations Neeraj Kumar said Sunday. As police sought to question the men, who were walking toward the mall's shopping area carrying bags, they ran, Kumar said. When one of them fired on police, authorities returned fire, killing both men, Kumar said. One commando was also hurt in the shootout, Reuters reports. Police said they found an automatic rifle and two pistols on the men. Authorities said they suspected Lashkar-e-Toiba, a Kashmiri separatist group declared to be a terrorist group by the United States and Pakistan. The mall, which was closed briefly but reopened within an hour of the killings, was crowded with Hindus, who were there to buy supplies for Monday's celebration of Diwali, the Hindus' largest celebration of the year. India's Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani said the two men appeared to be militants from Pakistan. "Based on initial information, it seems both the militants were Pakistanis ... It seems they wanted to create communal tension," Advani told television news channel Aaj Tak.
Police said they believed the men planned to open automatic weapons fire in the posh multi-level complex. "The idea of the terrorists was to spread panic in Delhi during Diwali," Kumar said. Police said they had stepped up security across the capital and were seeking possible accomplices of the dead men after finding a bag they believed belonged to them containing a map highlighting shopping markets in New Delhi, Reuters reports. Two months ago, Muslim militants shot dead more than 30 people in a raid on a Hindu temple in the western state of Gujarat. There have been fears a big attack could reignite Hindu-Muslim tensions in India following the country's deadliest religious violence in a decade in early 2002 in Gujarat in which more than 1,000 people died. Lashkar-e-Toiba is the same group New Delhi blamed for a deadly raid on the Indian parliament last December that triggered a 10-month military standoff between nuclear neighbors India and Pakistan that nearly erupted into war in June. Reuters contributed to this report.
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