France's President Francois Hollande played down the prospect of a swift conclusion to a drawn-out deal for New Delhi to buy 36 French jet fighters as he began a three-day visit to India Sunday.

The invitation for Hollande to be chief guest at India's Republic Day military parade on Tuesday had raised expectations the multi-billion dollar agreement for the Rafale jets would finally be sealed.

Indian counter-terror police arrested a group of suspected Islamist radicals and seized bomb-making material in a series of nationwide raids ahead of next week's Republic Day celebrations, officials said Friday.

A home ministry official said the National Investigation Agency (NIA), a federal police unit that probes terror offenses, formally arrested five suspects, while nine more men are being interrogated over their links to a local militant leader after the overnight raids in four different states.

India and Pakistan said Thursday they have postponed talks after a fatal attack on an Indian air base that New Delhi blames on a banned Pakistan-based group.

Islamabad said the talks were being "rescheduled", a day after it announced the arrest of several Jaish-e-Mohammed militants in an apparent effort to mollify its neighbor.

An Indian teenager held captive for two weeks by a gang of men said in an interview broadcast Sunday that she was repeatedly raped before being shot twice and dumped in a well on the outskirts of New Delhi.

The victim, reportedly aged 14, was allegedly abducted on November 22 while walking to a market in western Delhi, in the latest case of sexual violence in the Indian capital.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged his Pakistani counterpart Tuesday to take "firm and immediate action" against those behind an attack on an Indian air force base that left seven soldiers dead.

Modi's office said New Delhi had given Islamabad "specific and actionable information" on the audacious attack, which came just days after a landmark visit to Pakistan by the Indian premier raised hopes of improved relations.

A small bomb exploded near the Indian consulate in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad Tuesday, authorities said, after a series of attacks on Indian installations in the region.

The blast, which happened the morning after a gun and bomb siege near the Indian consulate in a northern Afghan city, was some 200 meters from the consulate in Jalalabad, an Indian diplomatic source there told AFP.

A major operation to secure an Indian air force base attacked by suspected Islamist militants has ended, police said Saturday, 14 hours after gunmen wearing army uniforms infiltrated the installation in northern Punjab state.

"The operation is just over. All four terrorists are dead," Kunwar Vijay Partap Singh, Deputy Inspector General of police for Pathankot region, told AFP.

Eighteen hospital patients died overnight in flood-hit Tamil Nadu, Indian health authorities said Friday, with local media reporting their ventilators stopped working when the power failed.

The private hospital where the intensive care patients were being treated reportedly suffered the power outage late Thursday after days of severe flooding that has already killed hundreds and submerged much of the state capital Chennai.

Thousands of rescuers raced to evacuate residents from deadly flooding Thursday, as India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi went to the southern state of Tamil Nadu to survey the devastation.

More than 40,000 people have been rescued in recent days after record rains lashed the coastal state, worsening weeks of flooding that has killed 269 people.

India on Wednesday deployed troops to Tamil Nadu and closed the main airport there after heavy rains worsened weeks of flooding that has killed nearly 200 people in the southern coastal state.

Thousands of rescuers carrying diving equipment, inflatable boats and medical equipment were battling to evacuate victims across the flooded state, officials said.