India labels deadly Red Fort blast a “terror attack,” blames “antinational forces”

India’s government has officially classified this week’s deadly car explosion near Delhi’s Red Fort as a terrorist attack, its first formal declaration on the incident that killed at least 13 people.

“The country has witnessed a heinous terror incident, perpetrated by antinational forces,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet said Wednesday, pledging a swift investigation to ensure “perpetrators, their collaborators, and their sponsors are identified and brought to justice without delay.”

No new evidence was released, but police had already invoked India’s sweeping anti-terror law, which grants broader powers of arrest and detention. Monday’s explosion, just steps from the 17th-century Mughal monument and political symbol, could become the deadliest attack in India’s capital since 2011 if confirmed as deliberate.

In a sweeping crackdown, Kashmir police raided hundreds of locations across the Himalayan region, detaining about 500 people, most of whom were later released after questioning, according to a police source cited by Reuters.

The raids followed the arrest of seven men, including two doctors, in a separate “anti-terror” investigation in Jammu and Indian-administered Kashmir. Investigators are now probing possible links between those detainees and the driver of the car that exploded.

A police statement described the suspects as part of a “white-collar terror ecosystem,” allegedly connected to Pakistan-based militant groups Jaish-e-Muhammad and Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry has not responded to India’s claims.

The two nuclear-armed neighbours have long traded accusations over militancy in Kashmir, where tens of thousands have died since an anti-India insurgency began in 1989. Although violence has fallen in recent years, April’s deadly attack on Hindu tourists, which New Delhi also blamed on Pakistan-backed militants, reignited tensions. That assault triggered a brief but intense military flare-up before a ceasefire was restored four days later.