India’s Home Minister Amit Shah has said three suspected rebels killed in Indian-administered Kashmir were responsible for the April killings of tourists in the disputed region’s Pahalgam that led to an intense military conflict with Pakistan.

The minister’s comments came on Tuesday, a day after the heavily-armed suspects were killed in a joint operation by the military, paramilitary and police on the outskirts of Kashmir’s main city of Srinagar.

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“I want to tell the Parliament, those who attacked in Baisaran were three terrorists and all three have been killed,” said Shah, referring to the area near the Kashmiri town of Pahalgam where 26 people, mostly Hindu tourists, were shot dead on April 22.

India accused Pakistan of backing the attackers, a charge Islamabad denied, leading to an intense four-day conflict between the nuclear-armed rivals in May that killed more than 70 people on both sides.

Shah said all three were Pakistani nationals and identified two of them as members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based armed group.

“Indian security agencies have detailed evidence of their involvement in the attack,” Shah said in a speech in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament.

Monday’s operation took place in the mountains of Dachigam, about 30km (18 miles) from Srinagar, the army said in a statement.

Shah said a security meeting was held immediately after the attack, and it was decided that the attackers should not be “allowed to leave the country and return to Pakistan”.

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Investigators relied on witness accounts and forensic evidence to establish that the rifles found on the men were the same ones that were used in the April attack, he said.

“It was confirmed that these three rifles were involved in the killing of our innocent civilians,” said Shah.

All those killed in the April attack were listed as residents of India except one man from Nepal. Survivors said the attackers had separated the men from the women and children and ordered some of them to recite the Muslim declaration of faith.

Another armed group called The Resistance Front (TRF) initially claimed responsibility for the attack. But as public criticism mounted over the killings, it retracted the claim.

Earlier this month, the United States designated TRF as a “foreign terrorist organisation”.

Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947, and the neighbours – who both claim the region in full – have fought two wars and several conflicts over its control.

Since 1989, Kashmiri rebels have been fighting against Indian rule, demanding independence or the region’s merger with Pakistan. India accuses Pakistan of backing the violence, but Islamabad says it only provides diplomatic support to the Kashmiris’ struggle for self-determination.