Four gunmen have been killed as the Indian military thwarted a pre-dawn attack on an air force base near the border with Pakistan, officials say.

Two soldiers at the Pathankot base were also killed in a gun battle lasting several hours.

The base is on the main highway leading to Indian-administered Kashmir.

The incident came days after the Indian and Pakistani leaders Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif met in Lahore to launch a surprise peace initiative.

The whole of India’s Punjab state has been placed on alert.

Militant allegation

The gunmen wore Indian military uniforms and drove a hijacked car when they launched the attack at 03:30 (22:00 GMT Friday).

They entered living quarters at the base, but were contained there and so were unable to cause any damage to military hardware, said air force spokeswoman Rochelle D’Silva.

The BBC’s Sanjoy Majumder in Delhi says it is not yet clear who the attackers were but suspicion is already falling on Kashmiri militant groups based in Pakistan.

However the AFP news agency quoted an unnamed security official as saying he believed the attackers to be from the Jaish-e-Mohammed group.

India says the group is backed by Pakistan, but Islamabad denies this.

In August seven people were killed in a similar attack when gunmen stormed a police station in nearby Gurdaspur district.

The three attackers in Gurdaspur were killed after a 12-hour standoff with police.

Pathankot air force base is about 430km (270 miles) north of the Indian capital, Delhi and is on the road linking Indian-administered Kashmir with the rest of the country.

Indian-administered Kashmir has seen a long-running insurgency against rule from Delhi, and Kashmir has been a flashpoint in relations between Pakistan and India for nearly 70 years since independence.

Source: BBC

-Agencies