CHANDIGARH, India -- Sikh radicals broke into a college dormitory before dawn Friday and unleashed a barrage of gunfire at sleeping students, killing 19 and wounding five others, police said.
A senior police officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the massacre fueled fears of increased violence by Sikh extremists with the approach of Nov. 22-26 elections for the lower house of Parliament.
'We have been fearing that terrorists would strike at different places to create fear among the electorate,' he said.
Sikh extremists have been fighting since 1983 to establish in the predominantly Sikh state the independent theocratic nation of 'Khalistan,' or 'Land of the Pure.' Almost 1,700 people have died this year in related violence.
Police said at least five radicals were responsible for the 2:30 a.m. massacre on the campus of the Thapar Engineering College, in Patiala, 40 miles southwest of the Punjab state capital of Chandigarh. The gunmen fled and no arrests were made.
The college was packed with hundreds of engineering students who traveled from across India to participate in a four-day youth festival that began Thursday, police said.
The assailants drove in an Indian-made Maruti automobile to the college, broke open the chain on the front gate and sped to Hostel A, where they forced a night watchman at gunpoint to open the door, police said.
The radicals then slipped quietly to two rooms where 24 students were asleep, burst in and opened fire with Chinese-made assault rifles, police said.
Superintendant of Police J.P. Birdi, who oversees the Patiala area, said 19 of the students were killed and five others were wounded and admitted in serious condition at the Rajendra Hospital in Patiala.
The attack was the deadliest since June 25, when extremists opened fire on Hindus exercising in a park, killing at least 22. Sikh gunmen also boarded a train at a remote railway station Aug. 27 and killed 17 people in four cars.
He said most of the 19 fatalities were Hindus. Nine were from Kurukshetra University in the neighboring state of Haryana and 10 from a technical institute in Kanpur, an industrial city in northern Uttar Pradesh state.
'We have definite clues about the persons involved in the massacre and shortly they will be arrested,' Birdi said.
The attack came amid a general buildup in political tensions in India due to the approaching elections in which Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's Congress (I) Party faces its toughest challenge since suffering its only defeat in 1977.
Gandhi has been criticized by opposition leaders for failing to stem the Sikh insurrection, which has suffered major setbacks in the past 18 months, but remains a dangerous source of political instability.
The prime minister has had a direct role in governing Punjab since May 1987, when he dismissed the elected moderate Sikh administration for failing to curb bloodshed and New Delhi assumed direct control of the state.
Since the imposition of 'President's Rule,' strife has persisted on a near daily basis in Punjab, where Sikhs hold a slight majority over Hindus.
The extremists, many of whom have turned to violent crime to fund their activities, contend that India's 16 million Sikhs require independence to escape discrimination by the Hindu-dominated central government.
Numerous pro-radical Sikhs are standing for the 13 lower house seats from Punjab.
Atinder Pal Singh, an extremist currently in jail awaiting trial on charges of participating in the October 1984 assassination of Gandhi's mother and predecessor, Indira Gandhi, is running as an independent for the Patiala constituency. He is viewed as offering a strong challenge to the Congress (I) Party candidate, Raja Singh.
