India says three strike divisions withdrawn from border

The Indian army has withdrawn three strike divisions from the Pakistan frontier as militant infiltrations decline, senior army and government officials said today.

The army withdrew the three strike divisions a week ago, before a deadly attack by militants on Saturday killed 28 people in Jammu, the winter capital of Jammu-Kashmir state, the officials said.

India’s foreign minister Yashwant Sinha said the attackers were ‘‘Pakistan-inspired’’ but significantly did not say they were ‘‘Pakistan-based,’’ as New Delhi had said about past attacks.

A strike division consists of about 6,000 soldiers, meaning the withdrawal could have involved approximately 18,000 troops.

The strike divisions - army units that are trained to push forwards in case of an outbreak of war or to make a retaliatory cross-border attack on militants - were removed after a study that confirmed the infiltration of militants from Pakistani territory had significantly diminished.

The officials, who have given reliable information about such movements in the past, said the government had not planned to make its troop withdrawals public.

Pakistan and India had massed about one million troops along their border in the aftermath of a December militant attack on the Indian Parliament.

The two countries moved close to a fourth war earlier this year before tensions were defused by strong diplomacy from the US and Britain.