A manhunt has been launched after a group of heavily-armed gunmen opened fire on tourists and killed more than two dozen people in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Media reports quoting sources said on Wednesday that a manhunt was underway for the suspects in what police are labeling a “terror attack,” though the shooters remain at large.

Military helicopters soared overhead, searching the forested mountain flanks for signs of the attackers.

The death toll in the attack has climbed to 26 after gunmen opened fire on tourists at a scenic location near Pahalgam a day earlier.

The incident marks an escalation in violence that has dented the Indian government’s narrative of stability in the disputed Muslim-majority region.

All those killed in Tuesday’s attack were listed as residents of India, except for one man from Nepal.

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said in a statement that the attack had been “much larger than anything we’ve seen directed at civilians” in recent years.

“This attack on our visitors is an abomination,” Abdullah said.

A statement issued in the name of The Resistance Front (TRF), which is believed to be an offshoot of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), claimed responsibility for the attack.

The statement linked the attack to the thousands of residency permits being handed over to Indian citizens, allowing them to settle in the disputed Himalayan region. 

The move, which allows non-Kashmiris to buy property, has angered many Muslim Kashmiris who fear being marginalized by a Hindu nationalist agenda under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

New Delhi says the change has allowed the region to be better integrated into India as a whole, and brought along with it economic and security benefits.

India’s defense minister vowed a swift response to those who carried out and planned the Kashmir region’s worst attack on civilians in years.

“Those responsible and behind such an act will very soon hear our response, loud and clear,” Rajnath Singh said in a speech in New Delhi, a day after the attack at a tourist hotspot in the contested Himalayan region.

“We won’t just reach those people who carried out the attack. We will also reach out to those who planned this from behind the scenes on our land.”

Singh further said that “India’s government will take every step that may be necessary and appropriate”.

India and Pakistan both claim Kashmir in its entirety, but each country only controls a section of the territory, which makes the Muslim-majority region a flashpoint in the larger India-Pakistan geopolitical rivalry.

Nuclear-armed arch-rivals India and Pakistan have long accused each other of backing forces to destabilize the other, and New Delhi says Islamabad backs the gunmen behind the insurgency.

Islamabad denies the allegation, saying it only supports Kashmir’s struggle for self-determination.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry on Wednesday offered its “condolences to the near ones of the deceased.”