NEW DELHI, India -- On the eve of India's biggest Hindu festival, Diwali, police said yesterday that they had thwarted a terrorist attack on a high-end shopping center filled with holiday shoppers.

The two would-be assailants, thought to be members of the Pakistan-based Islamic group, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, were killed yesterday by police in the shopping center's underground parking lot. No civilians or law enforcement officials were hurt, police said.

Neeraj Kumar, commissioner of the police anti-terrorism forces in New Delhi, said the police had received information that there was going to be an attack on a shopping center around Diwali, the Indian festival of lights. The holiday is marked with parties, sweets, lights, noise, and abundant sales and purchases.

Kumar said police had received a map of New Delhi with shopping areas marked and eventually had ascertained that Ansal Plaza was the target. When two young men drove into the parking lot and disembarked carrying an athletic bag, waiting police commandos approached them. The two men began firing and running.

Kumar conceded that he could not say with certainty that the men were from Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, or the Army of the Pure, which Indian officials say also took part in the attack on Parliament Dec. 13. That attack prompted a major military mobilization by India. Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani accused the group of an attack on a Hindu temple in Gujarat in September.

Diwali is celebrated with the unceasing detonation of firecrackers, so when Rajesh Chandok and Nikhil Arora, businessmen and friends, heard a popping noise in the parking lot yesterday, they thought it was simply holiday noise.

But when they headed for their car, they said, they saw gunfire being exchanged between the police and two young men, dressed in caps, T-shirts and jeans, who they thought were gangsters. When one of the attackers ran and began shooting at them, they hid behind a pillar for 15 minutes as the gunbattle continued, they said.

"If we had come before, just three or four minutes, I think we would be no more," Chandok said.

Police said they had recovered a loaded AK-56 assault rifle as well as Chinese-made pistols.