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Mumbai Terrorism Likely Kashmir Based

James Joyner | November 29, 2008

Western intelligence are focusing their investigation of the Mumbai terrorist attacks on a Kashmiri group. NYT:

American intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Friday that there was mounting evidence that a Pakistani militant group based in Kashmir, most likely Lashkar-e-Taiba, was responsible for this week’s deadly attacks in Mumbai. The officials cautioned that they had reached no firm conclusions about who was responsible for the attacks, or how they were planned and carried out. Nevertheless, they said that evidence gathered in the past two days pointed to a role for Lashkar-e-Taiba or possibly another group based in Kashmir, Jaish-e-Muhammad, which also has a track record of attacks against India.

[...]

Lashkar-e-Taiba denied any responsibility on Thursday for the terrorist strikes. American intelligence agencies have said that the group has received some training and logistical support in the past from Pakistan’s powerful spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or I.S.I., and that Pakistan’s government has long turned a blind eye to Lashkar-e-Taiba camps in the Kashmir region, a disputed territory over which India and Pakistan have fought two wars.  Officials in Washington said Friday that there was no evidence that the Pakistani government had any role in the attacks. But if evidence were to emerge that the operation had been planned and directed from within Pakistan, that would certainly further escalate tensions between India and Pakistan, bitter, nuclear-armed rivals. It could also provoke an Indian military response, even strikes against militants’ training camps.

Rumors of British ties are apparently false. Times of London:

Some 48 hours after launching co-ordinated attacks on the country's commercial capital rumours persisted that at least one of the terrorists involved in Wednesday's attacks was a Briton of Pakistani origin.The Foreign Office said that Indian authorities had confirmed that there was "no evidence that anyone, either of those shot or those in custody, was British".

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